First Snow

The ground had all been covered in a thin white veil during the night, and now the world seemed immeasurably different to the small fox who had just peeked her head out of her den to see snow for the first time. The fox was both confused and amazed at the snow, but knew that she would have to make her way through it either way to look for food, and so she walked hesitantly over the crunchy white snow as she went through the forest to an open glade to hunt. It was early in the morning and the sun was low in the East just barely lighting the ground beneath the bare Winter trees.

The fox’s thick red coat was speckled with white from the lightly falling flurries as she approached the open clearing to see what she could find. She had come here often before, and it tended to be a good place to find mice in the tall grass, or if she was lucky maybe even a rabbit. Now however, as she reached the edge of the trees she found it to be covered in even thicker snow than the rest of the woods. Slightly upset, and a little confused the fox walked around the edge of the glade trying to listen and smell for anything of interest. As she looked in towards the center of the clearing the fox saw the familiar sight of the curious piles of stone ruins that rested there. When she had first found them she had tended to stay away from them, and hunt near the edges of the glade where she felt less out in the open. The fox never really wondered what the ruins were, she just knew that she didn’t like them, and that they never had any mice in the cold, hard, tightly fitted stone bricks that made them up.

This time though the ruined pillars of stone were capped with white snow and the broken walls around them had snow drifts sloping down their sides. The fox watched as a bright red bird came and landed on the top of one of the pillars of ruined stone, and being curious to try and catch the bird, started to step out into the white expanse of snow that only the day before had been full of brown, dead winter grass. As she took a few more light paw steps trying to stay quite, the fox hesitated for a moment thinking of how she usually avoided the center of the clearing. It seemed different now though, and all the usual noises of the woods seemed to have been made quite. It was calm. Then the fox continued on keeping her eyes on the bird the whole time as it preened its bright feathers.

Now the fox had crept quietly through the open and had approached the stones without the bird having seemed to take notice. She jumped on one of the piles of stone with silent paws, and now was just a long jumps distance away from the bird. After waiting for a moment to gather her strength, the fox jumped up and across on a path to land where the bird was, and catch it. The fox flew through the air, but as she did the bird saw her just a moment too soon. The fox bit towards the red bird but was too slow, and so the bird flew off to a nearby tree, and the fox landed on the highest point of the ruins where the bird had been moments earlier. From there the fox eyed the bird where it had landed with some amount of anger, but that quickly faded. Then, again, now looking down on where the hard stone had been before before the snow, saw were her own paw prints were in the soft snow, and looked out from above at the glade. Now from up here it all looked different. The snow was smooth and undisturbed, all except her own tracks, and everything was calm. The fox sat down for awhile and watched the world be both cold and frozen, and full of a peaceful easiness. She liked how it looked and came back to it afterwards every now and then for many years, even when she wasn't chasing a bird, or a mouse, just to watch, no longer disliking being in the open of the center of the clearing. Even then though, it was always nicest covered in the white of the Winter’s first snow. Everything looks better after the first snow.

Word Count - 761