Before light, there were shapes that were hints—dark piles of ice against even darker sky. The lake a muted presence somewhere ahead, known only through the steady shuffle of water against the frozen edges. The ground shifted slightly underfoot, sometimes firm, sometimes giving way, each step carried the cold deeper into my legs. My breath rose in small clouds that hung in the stillness, fading slowly into the air, seamlessly disappearing as quickly as it came out, as if the air itself had taken them in without effort.
Color came quietly, from the blue shadow a warm sliver of light formed. This line along the horizon, more suggestion than sunrise, stretched thin and quietly. Snow and ice took the change before anything else, their surface catching the glow in soft warm gradients. Going from blue to warmer tones felt less like a change in color and more like the season exhaling slow breaths. The pools of open water appeared as the darkness thinned, each one holding the reflection differently—some sharp and bright, others deep and muted, as though they had agreed on nothing except to keep the sky.
Shadows retreated slower as each degree of sun came to. Ice ridges took on definition more than shape, edges layered and fragile came alive with the new light. Stones beneath the shallower pools revealed themselves in muted reds and browns, softened by the water’s thin skin. Overhead, the warm tones deepened, brushing through what remained of the night, smearing the last traces of darkness into something the day could keep.
Nothing arrived all at once. The sky, the snow and ice shifted together, unhurried. Then the water—it moved all together, calmly, until the moment felt whole without demanding to be more than it was.
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