Читать книгу Shaped by Snow. Defending the Future of Winter онлайн

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The confusion lasts only a heartbeat as another pair of eyes opens inches away. Something in me registers their shape, the curve of their creases. Their cool, pale color holds the answer to both questions lingering in my groggy mind: why I am waking up in the desert, and why snow filled my sleep. With the recognition comes a swirling euphoria, a lightness that spreads from my chest to the tips of my fingers and toes, residual thrill and movement from the lingering dream.

Last night I dreamed I was skiing. I was moving effortlessly down the fall-line of a mountain, consumed by the cold smoke of powder. I was inhaling it. It was passing through the membrane of my skin and entering into my bloodstream. Water droplets froze and latched onto blood cells, creating icy creeks that turned into raging rivers in my legs, and the steady drip of capillary trickles in my fingertips. Frost crystallized on my eyelashes, my fingernails lengthened into icicles, my eyes froze over like the surface of a pond. My tendons became brittle like frozen bark, my lungs expanded with crystals. The cold connected muscle and sinew to chilled bones. It filled my womb and left frosted fingerprints in my hair.