A Winter’s Night

This icy wind batters the animal’s flimsy shelter and rips it apart as if it were tissue paper. The animals stand by their wrecked homes and look on in awe as the humans begin to make their way to their luxury burrows, where they will drift off in to a heavy slumber dreaming of the warmth oblivious to the scenes of chaos outside. Eventually the wind will die away leaving an aftermath of death and destruction. But not for hours to come.

        When the wind eventually does die down, the animal receive an illusion of security and calm, but with this calm comes an unseen enemy. This enemy will dance around the forest laying its magnificent blanket of silvery ice. In under an hour the frost has been laid and the animal desperate to find shelter and warmth dig in vain at the impassable soil, clawing and clawing until they can dig no more and give up. The humans at this point are snug in their beds like sheets in the airing cupboard. They have no worries and sleep soundly for they do not need to worry about surviving; they have it all taken care of by that rattling, flaming beast in the depths of their cellar.

        Outside now the scene has changed from one of death and purgatory to a scene of desperation. The animals now have nothing to lose but their own lives. They sit waiting and hoping. They hope that the kind sun will awaken, and that dawn’s gray fingers will infiltrate the cruel night restoring order to the forest.

         The humans lie in their blankets like hot dogs in buns knowing that they will have to rise when sun shines upon the windows of their fortress. They know that they will have to begin the long trek to the city in their frosty luxury cars peering like through the frost on the windscreen as if it were still night. As the car leaves the forest the animals that were lucky enough to be in hibernation wordlessly mock the humans from their toasty burrows. They sleep without a sound and a care in the world.