The City of Ice

In a faraway land at a far away time, there were people like any other who longed for creativity and beauty, seeking knowledge and freedom. These people would stumble upon a great castle that glistened in the sun in a breathtaking display of dazzling ice. And they would approach it; it was everything they had ever dreamed of. Within an arm's distance of the castle, the ground would shoot up and encapsulate them in dark tunnels that twist and spiral.

In the city of ice, walls are invisible barriers that keep the hostages contained, sprouting out of the ground in front of them, trapping them. They make claustrophobic tunnels, shoving them away from anything they might believe they desire.

The air is cold and thick and hostile, and it wails through the tunnels softly. Whispers from the unknown echo above, underlying the child-like screams of the wind. Large clouds of breath disperse into the walls, freezing intricate flakes against them. The occupants avoid the crystals, fearing the delicate structures, the unknown causes of the exquisitely detailed formations that eerily resemble humans. They continue to be shoved deeper and deeper into the maze of forever-shifting ice.

Some inhabitants are overcome with curiosity of the ice. The ice that beckons with its humanoid features and delicate form. The ice that tugs at their breath and creates diaphanous frameworks. The ice that emits wind that screeches and echos. They touch the crystals and are absorbed into them, forever solidified the pellucid glass.

It is only then that the citizens are whole, are able to traverse the city in peace and live in harmony with the divine ice. They suck in the breath of the living to build skyscrapers and plant gardens. The crystals bloom in an intense and intricate lace to be picked and preserved in the name of love.

Once they have become the ice, the citizens see the decrepit people entrapped in their city. They see their blueish, deathly pallor, and ice embedded in their hair and eyebrows, encrusting their skin. They see their rags hang loosely on their sickly frames, they see the light in their eyes dim every minute within the borders of the city as they get closer and closer to giving up the possibility of leaving. The possibility of going back to the way things once were. The ice people see themselves as they were before they touched the ice. They see their past in all it’s sickly glory and they yell to them. They call for them to join them, they shout about the ease of their life. Their words aren’t in a language the entrapped dreamers understand, and are received as the howling of the wind. They pull on their breath and present them with flowers and smiles, but the inhabitants of the maze fear them.

It is the people who can’t open their minds and see the ice in a different light, the people who can’t interpret the screams as anything but unnatural and see the ice as daggers rather than lace, it is these people who perish in the city. They live out their lives shying away from the kind offerings of the ice people, running from the shadows of other prisoners and slowly losing hope of leaving.

The city isn’t trying to trap them, and the walls aren’t meant to be impenetrable barriers. The walls are opportunities for a better life. They spring up so suddenly in opportunistic joy for the people who stumble upon this city. It is so unfortunate for those who can’t see the city for what it is and who will ultimately breathe their last within. However, the breaths that they did breathe built skyscrapers.