I stopped on the bridge today, right in the very middle, and I turned and faced directly into the wind. The sky had a purple-grey hue to it and a haze of snow made everything seem muted somehow. Or maybe it was I who was muted. The wind whipped the snow almost vertically towards me and I closed my eyes against it. I could feel the northwind reaching through the layers of clothes I wore, finding its way through the weave of my mittens, icy breath down my scarf and up my neck until my bare flesh shivered. And I waited. The snow in my face came faster and more like ice than snow and I stood and let it pierce me. My legs ached with the cold of it and soon became numb. Then my cheeks. Then my hands. Then my ears. Then my nose. And I waited. Until I could no longer feel the wind, or the snow, or the warmth that once was. A return, familiar and welcome, to frozen numbness. Burned and purified by the absolute cold. Retransformed.

The Ice Maiden. Beware the cold beauty; one touch means frostbite.