Yellow tinted streetlight, smudged into a warm haze by the settling snow, illuminated the pathway through the park - usually cast into shadow at this late an hour.

Cutting through the park would knock a good 15 minutes off this trek home, he’d already been walking for 45 minutes and with the warmth from the streetlights being solely an illusion, he made up his mind and dug his hands deeper into his jacket, trudging onwards into Lester Park.

It was odd, he thought, how uncanny this familiar walk felt, how other worldly the bare trees looked - crowding the path, their shadows banished, starkly flattened against the landscape by the falling snow.

Falling faster too, and much deeper than he had expected, that 15 minutes may have been optimistic.

Funny how he had never noticed the gradual slope of the path, enough for the snow to be getting deeper with each descending step.

Well he was committed now, had to be nearly halfway through … alone in the middle of the park.

Suddenly the trees broke into a wide clearing, as if to punctuate his isolation.

His hind brain ached as generations of paranoid instinct illogically begged him to skirt around the cleaning, stick to the tree line… out of sight…out of sight of what?

He forced a laugh, trying to conjure a joke from that humourless thought - he regretted it as it fell dead on the snow.

With gritted teeth he set off across the clearing, such focus on the trees ahead the snow should surely melt.

But it didn’t, it was up to his shins within three steps and his knee by the forth.

Not only that but without the shelter offered by the trees the wind slashed at his shivering form, working to free his jacket, forcing his hands out from the relative warmth of his pockets to wrestle for control of the flapping fabric.

Then he tripped, went down fucking hard as an ecstasy of pain erupted from his ankle, folding beneath him.

Stars flooded his vision as he fell, he felt snow tumble down his collar, shocking him awake. Had he passed out? He couldn’t be sure, he felt nauseous and the cold that pulsed from his core felt colder than the snow that cocooned him.

His body curled his knees into his chest, burrowing deeper into the softly crunching blanket. It was like pressing his thumb into cornflour, he thought disjointedly, and smiled as he gave in to the warmth.

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