Fractured Grace

Blue ice stretched to the horizon, fading into the blinding rays of another waning winter sun. She shivered violently as the shifting mass groaned under her feet. She instinctively glanced down, looking for cracks under the transparent sheen. Suddenly, she tensed and dropped to her knees. Desperately clawing at the ice, she screamed...

The ice was unyielding as her cries ripped into the smothering silence. A fire burned beneath the fractured glass, and even as she scraped at it with her raw, numb fingertips, it dimmed into a glowing ember, a vague semblance of warmth, hope – and all too quickly, it died out, leaving no trace that it had ever existed, and she found herself beating her fists at the ice, her already meager strength dwindling.

Sitting back on her heels, she made herself calm her erratic breathing, until something else battled its way through her overwrought mind. Crying. Touching her cheeks, half expecting to find frozen water, there was none. This was not her cry, but the cry of her son. Her son? Pounding her fist against the ice once more, desperate to drive the madness of isolation away, she dove for her child, scooping him against her breast once more from the ice where she, blinded by her sudden hysteria, had nearly abandoned him.

His nose was like ice against her collar bone as she tucked him inside her coat. Standing, her feet barely finding purchase, she struggled along her way...whatever way it was.

Having long ago lost any semblance of time, she wasn’t entirely sure how long it had been when she realized there was no faint puff of warm breath on her skin.

Hugging her son tightly against her, willing his little heart to keep going, she sent him silent promises that they would get home. They felt empty, those promises, as paralyzed as her hands and feet. As if understanding her comatose thoughts, her feet folded beneath her, and she dropped against the frozen sea, anchored by her heightened hopelessness.

Curling her body around her child, pressing them both against the endless frost, she could somehow feel it growing beyond numbness. It bit at her, this strange new feeling, before becoming something akin to warmth, and she swooned as she allowed it to wash through her.

Even her desperation was beginning to disappear as the sun gave way to the clarity of the stars.


Author's Note:
I wrote this one for a recent writing competition (the prompt was the first paragraph, hence being italicized). I lost. LoL, it has numerous drafts, the above being my favorite - you, as a reader, don't really know what happens in the end, leaving that open to interpretation. But, I had some gripes who wanted more. The following picks up just before the final line and simply gives a bit more. Thought I'd give you both. This is the end of the full version I entered. :) Enjoy.


It was ending, then, she realized, as she inspected her unfeeling fingertips, backlit by something brighter than the sun. It seemed to be unconscionable, this thing she knew as death, this light at the end of the tunnel. If she could have gone toward it, she would have. That suddenly seemed rather unnecessary, however, as it seemed to be coming to meet her. It was violent, she thought as it flipped her over, ripping her clothes and beating at her chest. She hadn’t expected it to be so violent.

“He’s fine…he’s alive.”

The silence had long ago flooded her ears with its constant inanity, so it was difficult to fight her way to sense and realize that there was something she must do, something she must listen to.

“Grace!” yelled a voice, familiar through the delirium. “Stay awake, just keep breathing.”

But even her desperation was beginning to disappear as the sun gave way to the clarity of the stars.