Oco and the Key - pt. 2

Oco trudged through the snow towards home. The snow continued to winter down around him, trying to catch a glance of the glowing orb cupped in Oco's mittens, as they flew slowly by.

The cold was pleased. Her eyes narrowed at the wind laughing among the pines. The wind was too moody, as fickle as the weather. Pushy too, always shoving around the clouds and the cold.

However, with the sun away the cold had grown. Now, she was too strong, too powerful, to be pushed around by the wind and made to shift and move with the seasons. It was time to take the wind in hand, to bridle it and make it her obedient steed.

The cold caressed her faithful frost minions, and then with a tinkling laugh like breaking icicles she pointed cruelly, ordering the attack.

The frost minions surged forward into the wind frozen fangs gnashing, biting, chill claws raking the wind viciously, the wind was unprepared and no match for such a tenacious assault, flinging the frost minions into trees and banks of snow, the wind struggled vainly to free himself from their cold grasp but they were too many.

The wind howled.

Oco shivered, pulling his coat closer, as the wind whipped about him. The snow was falling much faster now, snow mixed with ice, cold flakes and frost flying about like crazed bees; my how they stung. The end of his hat lashed about in the air like a long angry snake in the wind. In all the wind his brown, fur-lined boots were having trouble holding onto the snow-covered ground.

Oco quickened his trudge towards home to escape the rising blizzard, and the deepening darkness. As he pushed through the deep snow, he wished he had longer legs. He wished he’d brought a lantern. He gasped as the orb of light in his hand shifted, seemed to melt into itself and then shine brighter in the shape of a small lantern.

Startled, he dropped it. It landed in the air a few inches above the ground. The snow quickly melted around the lantern until a small patch of grass was visible in a circle around it. Oco’s bright eyes widened in wonder.

“How odd.” He whispered. Reaching out slowly he touched the lantern tentatively. It emitted soft warmth, not the heat he had expected.

He hesitated, but the vicious flurries whirling around him spurred him into action. He grabbed the lantern. It shone brightly. Oco grinned, then holding up the lantern, now lighting his way, Oco hurried home.

The cold watched the small boy, Oco, hurrying home, her cold gaze narrowed. He must never return the key to the sun.

Turning her attention back to the wind, she fashioned a whip from a gust and flicked her wrist with a snap, a pine branch broke with a sharp crack, frozen. The cold looked back on the boy once more, before riding off on the wind, deeper into the forest to tell the gloom of the small boy and his key.

The wind howled.