Fiction & Nonfiction

It's snowing in the mountains!

It’s snowing in the mountains!


The range of northern hills wore the white veil of falling snow.
It looked like a beautiful tribal belle, her head covered with white muslin. The waterfall on the opposite hill looked like a vertical white ribbon decorating the hillside.
To Ria, the whole spectacle was a dream coming true.

"What does it matter," her husband said irritably, when she pressed him for a trip to the hill station.
"What difference does it make to our life?" was his reaction to Ria’s imaginative description of the snow she never saw.

Sitting on the balcony outside their room at the guesthouse, early in the pearly dawn, Ria thrilled with pleasure when she saw snow falling like manna from heaven.

“This is life,” she sighed with delight. She had only read about it. For the first time in her life she was looking at it. Her eyes shone with ethereal light. She trembled with excitement, like a leaf in a cool breeze. She breathed in the clean air, and felt joy seeping into her spirit.

Unable to restrain herself, she walked into the falling snow. Her young body glistened with snowflakes landing on her arms and face. She turned around, and saw the slanted fall of enchanting thin snowflakes, distinctly white against the granite hills, and the green valley. The sprinkling snow looked soft, and light like the wings of the butterfly. Ria couldn’t believe its illusory beauty.

“I want to live here. I feel as if I am a part of the surroundings.”  That night she slept deeply. She never woke up. The brain tumor that she never knew of, claimed her life.

Ria forever rested thus, in the beauty of nature, where it snowed every so often.

Word Count:289