A WHITE AFTERNOON

No one could have discerned his feelings from his face. It was a rigid face, a stern face. Lips always pursed together, a nose tending towards the flatter side and thickly set eyebrows. The pair of eyes beneath the latter were dark and unusually bright. They made one wonder whether there was a hidden abundance of life in him; more perhaps than people are comfortable having around.

On this particular winter afternoon he was standing in the middle of the empty road, eyes fixed to the sky, and doing a very strange thing indeed. He was dancing with the snowflakes. Round and round they went--the man and the snow. One twirl and then another, a graceful landing and then they began again.

It's amazing how easy it is to lose hold of your senses when you are out with friends. They were great friends--nature and the man; had always stuck together through the good, the bad and the mundane. For wasn't it the ferrets who had come to his rescue when he didn't have any friends in school, he could still smell the flowers that bloomed in the park that day so long ago when the girl he liked in college had smiled at him (she left him later that year and there was nothing but the dead autumn leaves to witness it when he punished her for that), and wasn't it the sunshine, the warm, golden afternoon sunshine that dried his tears when he stood outside his hostel holding the letter informing him of his mother's death.

He stuck his tongue out. One flake melted on it as gracefully as it had landed. The snowflakes started laughing and so did he...what delight, how exhilarating the feeling. He headed towards the woods where the snow was a patch of white against the green.

Further and further he walked into the dark leaving the dull grey of the town behind. He had heard the town being described as beautiful but he wished it would die. In his mind's eye he could see the snow slowly covering the narrow dirty lanes that crawl up and down the hillside, the ugly houses and the uglier people that live in them till no trace of their existence would be found. 'All that would remain then' he thought with a savage glee 'would be an infinite sea of whiteness. Soft, pure whiteness and me'.

A crow cawed out of nowhere and broke his train of thought. He looked around and found himself to be in a part of the forest he had never seen before. Wait, what is it that he saw here that made him halt? Footsteps, human footsteps! Did they belong to the genii of the forest? He started following them for there was little else to do. The charm of the forest in this weather can hold anyone still. For him though it was more than charm. It was life.

His foot almost slipped at the edge of a slope but he steadied himself in time. Below him stood a tin shack-- the shepherd's place. The shepherd was just a vile man who borrowed money from townsfolk on pretext of giving his boy an education and then blew it away on drink. 'They are like a disease the whole lot of them' he thought 'and now this midget, this insect he has polluted the enchantment of the forest, polluted this shrine of peace and beauty with his footsteps, his repugnant breath, his thoughts...'

His head hurt with intense rage. 'Why oh why can't they leave me alone? That's all I ask for. I don't want to know any of them, talk to any of them, live with any of them. We'd be happy together just the forest and me.'

He started walking with greater speed. He was almost running. The need to be as far from the shack as possible seemed above all else. Soon shortness of breath forced him to stop. The snow was now falling much thicker than before. The trees were now just a speck of green against the all consuming white.

'It is beautiful, just beautiful to be here' he felt 'Just the two of us--snow and I, no thoughts to plague me, no people to test my patience'. He went round and round, recommencing his little fairy dance with the snowflakes that had started in the middle of the street. He spread his arms. Life was just a whirlwind of beautiful white specks.

Suddenly he slipped. PANIC, but that lasted only for a quarter of a second. Soon he was floating in a sea of nothingness. A thud and he found himself lying on something hard. His senses felt numbed. He saw a splash of red against the white; the red growing bigger. A strange yet soothing warmth crept over his head...'

It was not until next spring that they found his body. It was very well preserved by the layers of snow on top of him. The strange thing was the smile on his face. "He must have been walking on the path around the cliffs" said the policeman responsible for the inquiry "The lake at the bottom churns out huge quantities of mist. Poor chap, couldn't see where he was going". "Oh well" said another man "the rocks here are dangerous but they'd be barricaded next year. This part of the woods will be chopped off. They've received a permit for building a mall here".

So it was that with death hanging over her fate the forest decided to spare her best friend, her lover the grief, the anger he would have felt on her death had he been alive to witness it.