Cold.
I'm cold.
I need to wake up.
Eyes open. The world blurs. The body stirs
Reluctantly, it rises from the frost.
A wind so sharp it bites like regret.
North winds swirling, blue as frozen tears.
Snow piles high, silent, mournful.
His breath comes in icy bursts. The world stretches out, frozen and still.
Everything feels distant. Everything feels...
empty.
I knew who I was, and who I am now.
Dead in the winter. Born in the cold.
Once, I held the name David.
And so it shall stay.
So I looked, and I felt it. I knew who I was.
I was the first winter of Greece,
the grief of Demeter, given form.
I will last for six months,
and when the frost melts, my task is done.
Then, for another six months, the sun will reign.
Spring will bloom, and I shall fade.
But when the seasons shift once more,
I shall return.
Until then, I shall remember.
As a human from the future, I shall remember my past life,
One who might read this in a story.
So I walked. And walked. But I found nothing.
Except for something like a pull, a thread.
A string tied to someone.
I followed it, instinct guiding me,
my cold breath rising to meet the sky.
And then, I needed speed.
So the winter itself lifted me,
And the winds carried me
across the clouds,
near the stars.
When I reached the place the string pulled me to,
I found myself surrounded by dead trees,
their limbs twisted like forgotten memories.
Large gaps filled the land,
and from them, a sound vibrated, not crying, but something worse,
something that felt like the earth itself was weeping.
I knew who it was.
It was the one who had given life to this body.
The one who unknowingly breathed new life into me,
even through her sorrow.
So I walked toward the crying,
as the string pulled me closer,
and there she was, a woman with brown hair like dirt,
dressed in green, like leaves long past their prime.
Her tears fell like rain for a child she had lost.
I knew this story.
I had read it in many books,
watched it unfold on screens
a tale so familiar,
It seemed like I could recite it before it even began.
But there was nothing I could do.
No comfort I could offer.
Grief.
It is what I was born from.
A constant ache in my chest,
the frost that defines my being.
I could not remove it,
for without it, I would be nothing more than a fleeting, momentary cold.
Even if I wanted to, I couldn't console her.
I, too, had lost a family.
But for her, there was still a chance to see hers again.
Mine are not yet born.
So I sat beside her.
I did not cry, for she wept enough for both of us.
And I was here near the mother of my second life.
After three days of waiting,
I felt no hunger.
No strain from stillness.
I simply sat,
a ghost wrapped in frost,
anchored in quiet beside her sorrow.
Demeter's tears had stopped.
Not because the pain was gone ,
No, pain like hers never really leaves.
But because even grief must rest.
Between us, a shallow pool had formed,
glistening with salt and silence.
When it stilled, so did she.
She looked up and saw me for the first time.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice soft, as though afraid the answer might break her.
"Your grief," I said.
Simple.
True.
She stood slowly, like a tree deciding to move after centuries of stillness.
And then, with eyes still heavy from mourning,
she stepped close and embraced me.
My face rested against her chest,
My heart thudding where my head should be,
and my voice,
My voice was lost to the wind,
scattered like snow across the silence.
And so we stayed,
Three more days beneath the open sky,
Demeter, clutching her sorrow,
me like it might vanish if she lets go.
On the third day,
Just as the sun began to tip westward,
a man descended from the clouds —
His sandals bore wings,
And the breeze whispered his name.
Hermes.
He spoke to Demeter far from me,
words carried off by wind and leaf.
But I saw it —
a smile.
Soft and trembling at the corners of her mouth.
The first since her tears had dried.
Then she turned, returned,
and pulled me into her arms again.
She whispered, voice barely air:
"My daughter will return to me… within six days."
Then, with no warning but that ancient motherly strength,
She took my hand and led me away
to a house that stood wide and weathered,
draped in silence and scattered with wilting vines.
All around it, the plants hung their heads,
lifeless, like the world still mourned.
I felt them.
Like echoes of myself.
A quiet pull. A shared root.
I lifted a hand.
One flower brown, broken, reached up.
It blossomed again, bright and defiant,
a star in the withered dusk.
Demeter watched.
And then she said, softly, almost to herself:
"I guess… you're not only my grief.
son of mine."