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Posts published in “Day: November 6, 2009

04 – The Talking Portrait

Snow sat fat and heavy on the ground outside the cottage.  Winter whispered its silent elegy for the green of spring and summer.  Trees sat barren, gray battered obelisks showing only shades of their former verdant glory.  Color had drained from the world, the sky and ground matching pallid sheaths, shadows and smoke and ice and clouds.  A crow announced himself to no one.  A pale man trudged through the snow drifts, face down, beard covered in ice formed by the freezing of steam from his nose, a swirling vortex surrounding his head with every breath.

He pushed the door to the cottage open and stepped inside.  In the fireplace, the struggling flames danced and jumped at the influx of air from the outside but quickly resumed their lingering death as the room settled.  He pulled off his coat and brushed out his beard and wrapped a dry blanket around himself.  He touched the coffee cup on the table to feel for warmth.  Cold.  He would have to make more.  Dissatisfying.  He threw a new log onto the fire and collapsed into his ragged upholstered reclining chair.