Finally, excruciatingly, brilliantly, the sun crept above the skeletons of trees that lined the snow-covered orchard. The sun danced with the wisps and streaks of cloud that glided through the luminous golds and pinks and light blues bourgeoning forth from blackness, from nothingness. It had been so long since he’d seen the sun rise, really seen it, that he’d forgotten so many things. He looked up again, lines crackling, creasing through a young face. Dark blue, this time spread in a thin line across the bottoms and tops of the sky, warming the frigid earth below with a gilded edge, glinting black and bright like a sword or a fever. The trees were lifeless and still, without color or hope. But the sky folded into itself, a self-contained world separated from fallacy, vibrant with life and throwing punishing color from somewhere beyond this. Rising from the numbing frost, he was overwhelmed with thoughts, like debris squeezed through a sieve. Only one came through: “Get up and go.”

It was slow moving at first. Snow crunching down, thick, syrup, chilled air swirling in coils around lifeless vegetation. No animals here, not yet. He broke through a patch of trees in the orchard to a clearing he'd not seen before. This is mine. Where is this? A memory? No, I've been here before. But when?

It was only then, when the onrush of sudden, brief, flittering memory streams whirred through that he felt the blood, cold and dead, like a fissure in an ice cube, frozen on his temples. A palm to his forehead, fingers to his ears, temples, probing at the introduction to a foreign element, like a blind man feeling through a war zone. This was all new. No, it wasn't. I've been here before.

When he was small his grandfather, laden with Alzheimer's, gradually left his senses. His mother told him, at the time, that his memory came and went in waves. It wasn't something seized by reason or circumstance. It just happened. But this, now, was something very different. The memory stabbed, fought, made overtures and then retreated again, a fleeting hammering that abated only when the external stimulus was gone. But this orchard, the blood, the past... all very real, all very stern, all gone. There was nothing here. But when?

The memory paralyzed, so it was all he could do to push it down. The snow, the endless crunch, the miles of white, the blood crusted on his jacket lapel. Every so often he'd clear another tree grouping, feel a fleeting punch from somewhere in the back of his memory, force it down and continue on. The sky was high now, but still blue black, cloudless except for small pillowy wisps toward the perfect horizon broken by the jagged treetops.

alright, Parchy. Since you're the only one who comment on my work, I feel compelled to comment on yours. I'm just so used to reading non-fiction that you should take everything I say with a grain of salt.

I love the imagery of the "skeleton of trees", I can perfectly imagine the scenery. As I commented on a photo c_b picture in my thread, I love the way bare tree branches look silhouetted against the low light sky and you describe it quite well.

I am drawn in to the blood associated with the protagonist. The only problem I have is with the lack of description of the coldness affecting him. You describe the snow and obviously the winter scene so well, but I have no idea how the cold is affecting him.

I'm anxious to see where this goes.

yeah i don't know, i probably should have given this more forethought, i just kind of vomited it out on to the page. ill do some thinking and come up with some more soon.