I wake up, and it’s snowing.

But it isn’t the sort of ferocious snow that whips against your windows with a vengance. The kind that drowns out sound with its keen, moaning whine. The sort that makes you want to crawl back into bed and never get up.

No.

It’s the sort of snow which falls softly, steadily downward, softening all of the world’s edges with white. The sort of snow that fits a soft, melancholy mood.

The sort of snow that kisses your windows.

I stand at the window, thirty stories above a city that’s still asleep, a city that’s still dark. Everything is still. So still, I can almost imagine the soft, crackling song of snow falling on snow.

A dull ache grips me, then. Settling in around my shoulders, making me slump forward against the window, where my breath collects in an opaque cloud of condensation.

Because the truth is, my mind is here, suspended thirty stories above a city. But my heart – my heart’s still sleeping over a small town, and a house with a red front door.