Winter Invasion Concluded

This is a full version of my story "Winter Invasion" 


Barely discernable and very widely scattered in the overcast dull light, the advance scouts drifted in surveying the terrain and settling among the foliage and around any manmade object, resting quietly in the bitter cold.

Soon, more visible and in greater numbers, others began arriving to fill the remaining hiding places then lying frozen in plain view when all were taken.

Their numbers coming down grew in intensity as the breeze started to force them to march swirling in groups in the streets, along the sidewalks, and across the plazas and parking lots.

They began to huddle together in nooks and crannies, anywhere the wind would leave them alone for they were freezing cold.

Now their white numbers gathered in such large groups that the grass was fading from view along with any pavement and the tops of other objects left out in this desolate gray chill.

They locked their appendages together and held tight as they charged onward, making them appear bigger, more intimidating, then forming a layer across the land woven together with their determination.

Eventually, they formed a shimmering blanket of whiteness that kept growing thicker as more and more rushed in faster and faster extending their reach on top of the few trees with leaves and the roofs of buildings.

They waited patiently knowing that they had succeeded for nowhere was it any longer safe to move without encountering the onslaught.

Even as they masked the world, the counter attack was mounted by early responders brushing them aside to form lanes and allow other defenders to navigate through the blanket.

A few more ignored their bid to conquer the country and waded into the fray, crushing the whiteness with their feet.

But they wouldn't ever retreat and their reinforcements countered with a blizzard of activity that recovered any breaches in the fluffy blanket, hid those trampled, and further thickened the blanket where it hadn't been touched.

Those early responders slowly withdrew to their fortifications after attaining small progress to the main thoroughfare even though it remained completely under the grip of the building white blanket.

The invasion kept a steady and heavy pace unrelenting in its resolve to capture all that was out and blind any that chose to venture into their chilly embrace.

Their wounded, being mashed so tightly together, formed a new and even more formidable threat: their bodies transformed into mounds attached solidly to the ground in groups, slippery, often upending any counter-attackers into the waiting blanket of millions.

They attacked even more menacingly using alliances - first, the wind to send them biting into anyone who came out, sticking into the defenders armor that allowed them to penetrate the forts; next, with heat they transformed to wreck havoc in groups running across the floor.

The battle continues to rage with the only hope that the invading force will soon pass by and that paths can again be cleared in time for life to return to some sort of normalcy or, at least, to bend the invaders will.

The defenders were eventually saved by the fickleness of the wind that wanted to keep moving on, taking the gray mother ships away, breaking apart any escort vessels, and tossing them far across the continent.

The remaining invaders bid their time but were met with melting flames of the sun piercing the cold with warmth, even below the blanket, sending many invaders flowing through the caverns to rivers, lakes, oceans where they rejoined others flushed from the battles.

But they again used their alliances - the sun's heat and wind's ladder - to rise as vapor, gather together forming more gray ships, returning to the war that they will never allow to end.

The seasonal white invaders were soon purged from the land unable to form in the heat of war, but they returned anew as clear orbs, minute to large, to pound the defenses through temperate days, waiting, and knowing, that their seasonal strategy will again join with the chill to the land and animals that have invaded their domain, for they know they cover two thirds of this spinning ball and are really not the invaders at all.



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