Everything looks the same in the snow, white on white on white.
***
"You look beautiful," he tells her.
She laughs and spins again, letting her dress twirl around her, blossoming on the green hill with all the other flowers. She trips and he catches her. "You look pretty good yourself," she says. Her fingers reach up, hesitate, touch his face like butterfly wings. She has noticed him, too. "The sun feels wonderful," she murmurs. She tilts her head back and closes her eyes.
He does the same, breathes deep, basks in the springtime. "So what do you want to do now?" he asks. "Chase butterflies and pick daisies? Since we can't sing together in my cafe at the moment."
She laughs. "We have to enjoy it," she reminds him. "Isn't that the point of all this?"
"That's why I suggested it," he says, smiling. They look at one another, sunlight dripping off their eyelashes and down their skin. He steps closer; she stands on her toes. Lightly, so lightly it might have only been the touch of springtime, their lips touch.
Then they're standing apart again, grass and flowers and blue sky between them. She smiles and grabs his hand. "Let's enjoy it then," she says.
They run through the grass, up the hill. They roll down, tumbling until their laughter spins around them in dizzying circles and they trip and stumble as they race back up the slope. They race, they dance, they sing off-key songs neither knows the words to. They pull up handfuls of grass and throw them at each other, they weave flowers together to make crowns, they climb the tree at the crest of the hill. But the view is too clear from up there; they jump down and nestle in each other's arms instead, lean against the roots of their tree and bask in the springtime.
***
Everything looks the same in the snow, white on white on pale dead skin on white.
***
