• He loved the snow.
    It was always so pure and clean.
    The cold never bothered him. The ice and snow were as much a part of him as his own flesh and blood.
    He could play in the snow for hours on end, his ten year old mind endlessly finding games to play by himself as only a child can.
    "Yuki."
    He was so engrossed in his playing that he barely heard his father's call.
    "Yuki!"
    He turned his head to see his father, standing tall at the edge of the clearing.
    "Time to go son. Your mother has dinner waiting for us."
    He smiled and ran forward, not realizing that it should have been unusual that his father had called him by a nickname that he didn't gain until he was a grown man.
    But unusual things always seem normal in dreams such as this.
    He tripped just before he reached his father and fell face first into the snow.
    He smiled as he sat up, expecting his father to laugh at his clumsiness and pick him up so they could continue home.
    His father was gone.
    He looked around, confused. His father would never leave him on his own out in the snow, since it was his father's own rule that he was not allowed to go outside by himself.
    He was too young, his father had said, to be out on the mountainside alone unless he stayed within sight of the house.
    The house was gone too.
    He decided that his father was playing a joke on him. Hiding so that he could give his son a good scare.
    Well he wasn't scared, he would find his father, find the house, and he and his parents would eat dinner together in their warm kitchen.
    He started running.
    As he looked for his father, he barely noticed that the wind had picked up and was blowing the snow everywhere, making it more difficult to see.
    He ran for what seemed like hours but found no trace of his father. Finally he collapsed to his hands and knees to catch his breath and rest his weary legs.
    His father must be close by, he MUST. He would not leave his child alone where he could be hurt or worse.
    But where was he?
    He closed his eyes and held back the panic that was creeping into his mind.
    "Yuki."
    His eyes snapped open, coming to rest on the figure standing in the snow in front of him.
    He knew her.
    He knew her voice, her face, her scent, the feel of her hair, the taste of her lips. The smile she wore was a smile that was meant only for him. In her arms she held something small wrapped in a blanket, the unmistakable shape of a child.
    His child.
    Their child.
    He stood up, his now adult body standing at over seven feet in height. He smiled as he walked toward her, his long white hair blowing behind him and mixing with the snow in the air.
    The wind suddenly gusted just as he reached her, blowing snow into his face and forcing him to close his eyes.
    It lasted no longer than a second and he opened his eyes, intending to take her home before the storm became any worse.
    She was gone.
    He felt frozen. He forgot how to breathe.
    He had only lost sight of them for a moment, how could they have disappeared?
    With the snow and the wind, there was no hope of finding foot prints or following a scent.
    No hope at all.
    But he could not give in to despair. He would find his love and his child or die in his search.
    Just as he made up his mind, his sensitive ears picked up a new sound.
    At first it could be mistaken as the howling of the wind, but he knew the sound for what it was.
    The crying of a baby.
    Wasting no time to think, he ran toward the sound, knowing that an infant would die within minutes from exposure to such cold.
    The crying made his heart ache. If anything were to happen to his child...
    He stopped suddenly, his feet skidding in the snow.
    The sound of the crying was now coming from behind him.
    It made no sense. The crying had never become loud enough to indicate he passed the child by, if anything it sounded farther away.
    There was no time to contemplate the matter, he had to find the child. He turned and ran as fast as he could, following the sounds of crying again.
    It was no use.
    The sound changed direction every few moments.
    And every time the direction changed, the crying sounded weaker and weaker, until it finally stopped altogether.
    He slowly stopped running and stared out into the swirling snow.
    I wasn't possible. How could he fail to find them? The woman who held his heart and soul. His child who hadn't even had the chance to live yet.
    He was alone now.
    'But then, you've always been alone.'
    He shook his head, trying to dispel the voice in his mind.
    'Even when you're around others, you're still alone.'
    "No."
    'And they'll all leave you eventually...your friends...and that woman you think you love.'
    "No."
    'Your parents couldn't even stand to be around you, remember? They left you all alone in that big house on the mountain.'
    "Stop it."
    'And eventually you'll end up back where you started.'
    "Stop."
    'Alone in the snow.'
    He stood in the middle of the storm, his face frozen by tears he didn't know he'd been crying.
    There was a feeling in him that he didn't recognize, something he hadn't felt in a very long time.
    Fear.
    A black, icy fear that couldn't be stopped. Fear that the voice he heard was right. Fear that the small group of loved ones he had found would leave him. Fear of being completely alone again.
    He screamed.
    But the wind swallowed up the sound.
    He hated the snow.