And then it snowed again

Great white sheets of it so the world looked descended upon by a thick grey fog. There were stories of abandoned cars and devouring snowdrifts. Roads were closed, snowploughs tucked safely away as winter stormed on.

The space between snowbanks on our road quickly filled in, narrowing and deepening, until, from a not too far distance the white expanse became indiscernible from any other white expanse and Murdoch and I owned all that we could see. I let him run down the middle of the road unleashed, which I have not done since my trusting days of five years ago before I realized the extent of his deviousness. But whom could we possibly meet on a day like this?

I called to him anyway with an edge of panic as he ran ahead, becoming a small black shape threatening to disappear in that grey curtain and he stopped and turned and ran back. We crashed in to each other and fell into a towering snowbank and then I threw snowballs for him to leap after and catch all the way to the end of the road. The snow on the trail there was up past my knees, so we played in the drifts that swept the circumference of the turnaround before trudging home.

It snowed all day, heavy and serious, and there was homemade soup and cookies and tea. We let the snow pile up outside the door and watched trees turn white against the vague grey shapes of others in the distance. The storm slowed in the evening and overnight, it cleared.

The next day, the sun came out, the dogs played, and Murdoch ate too much snow.

And then it snowed again. But not as much.