Microscopic fractals drift leisurely through the air, scattering wildly from the smallest puff of wind. Freshly fallen from huge swaths of cotton-clouds covering the blearily-blinking eyes of the night sky, they twist and turn in a waltz, careening gently into bare-armed branches. Piling up on the frozen ground, the snowflakes form a barrier of ice as the final hurdle before the thawing of spring. A hearty stag trudges lightly through the crunching snow, unaware this would be the last winter he will ever witness. Jerking suddenly from a stray moonbeam, he turns his gaze upwards to the layered clouds parting ways, revealing slivers of a waning crescent. He peers blithely at the source of light and the moon stares back, illuminating his eyes with an enlightened glow. Snorting a fine mist of condensation from his snout, the stag turns back to the crepuscular shadows of the woods and trots comfortably down an unseen path as his faded silhouette gradually vanishes from sight.

The sky is soon cleared from all cloud cover with a broad sweep of the wind, gliding up and down in blank coats of gesso before the moon bathes the world anew, casting down a myriad of decorous blue hues. Awoken from his tranquil slumber, a lonesome cat shivers and ventures forth from his burrow into the exposed elements of the snow. This tiny splotch of ebony ink against a paper-white canvas. The worst of the sharp chill has been relinquished, allowing him peaceful passage across the frozen cascading curls of the river. Wrapped in wisps of shuddering breaths coming to a standstill by the endless winter, the rivulets streak into oblivion. The cat treads through ripples petrified in time. He leaps with a flicker of his tail and crosses this gleaming crest of silver streams, disappearing past the river bend. Here, the slender arch of the bank dips into the shadows of the forest where the jagged edges of icicles impound the inhabitants within.

On the edges of this lamenting forest, Evergreens sprout sporadically. A rebellious viridescence against the monotonous dead of winter with cherry-red juniper berries topping the sprinkles of needle-thin shrub leaves in a motley of vivid colors among the frosted snow. A downy owl coos softly to fill the silence before resuming her guard, movement still as a gargoyle perched precariously on a cathedral. Scanning the forest for any scurrying critters desperate enough to risk her hooked talons, she plunges silently into the abyss of night with a vigorous beat of her wings and flies past the winding branches of an aging oak tree, just a few inches from where her nest resides. Wrinkled deep beneath the scrawled bark of this tree are the many imprints of rings, a testament to the eras it has stood over any other saplings in these woods. All around, the sunken trees heave with the weight of the accumulated snow, branches drooping forward but unbending with nary a shudder. So prideful in their dormancy as they await the warmth of spring.