2 - THE SNOW'S ARRIVAL
Marcos was at his room, trapped in the sheets of his book where he wrote his new novel. He decided to use paper and pen after the failed attempts doing that on the computer. The electronic device was full of temptations, that insisted on pulling his attention out of the world that he was trying so hard to create, like the monsters' tentacles from Lovecraft pulled his victims, becoming almost impossible to detach.
And it was working.
By his calculations, half of the story has already passed. His characters were now cohesive and well defined. He was afraid to end some characters by getting closer to the end, with some that during all that process, were captivating his heart, and becoming almost a friend or a brother.
A special character.
The dark would swallow the room if it wasn't for the fading moonlight that entered through the window, and by the lamp of the desk lamp which emitted yellowish rays onto the paper that served how the object of his creation.
He was so stuck in his world, passing the tip of the pen onto the paper surface, forming letters, words, and then phrases that interlinked the whole plot of his world, that did not even notice the first snowflakes falling from the sky and colliding, almost inaudible, with the warm floor of Black Lake.
Anyone who put his or her ear close to the asphalt in those first minutes would hear the noise of it melting when it found the heat of the place where it is played. It's the same noise that a boiling surface emits when cold water is poured over it.
"Sssssssssssssssss."
"Sssssssssssssssss."
It was when a gust of wind came through the window that the boy had left open, to make the air circulate and refresh, that his eyes turned, and something that seemed impossible for him took his attention.
That could never happen in his city.
Snow in Black Lake. One of the warmest cities in Santa Catarina.
He rubbed his eyes, in a way to wake up from a dream or something, and a smile fluttered from ear to ear when he realized it was true.
Snow.
He left the room running but stopped when he remembered what was falling outside. Snow. Cold.
He came back, opened the closet, and rummaged through the piles of clothing he almost never had to wear — coats and scarves that smelled of mold, forgotten at the bottom of the shelves.
He took two pieces, and put them on, and then came back to run.
He went down the stairs screaming to anyone inside the house.
—Guys, see it. Quick!!
He didn't wait for the answer, ran to the door, and left the house. He went to the garden, where he opened the arms, looked at the sky, and let himself feel.
—What a good feeling!
He was still that way, smiling like a child who had just won something he had hoped for when her mother joined him.
—This is not possible.
Marcos looked at her.
—You bet it is.
***
The snow had never visited Black Lake, and it seemed impossible for that to happen there. Since the writing of the story began, no one has ever described such an event in those lands at the north of Santa Catarina.
But it hadn't the breaking news announced that something similar happened two days ago in a city nearby?
Global warming.
This was the news' agenda since the first phenomenon visited them. Reporting and more reporting trying to find some reasons to explain the snow presence in mid-summer, in a city where a day ago, the maximum had marked 38 degrees.
No journalist had been able to enter that city yet; the blizzard was so intense that it became dangerous. No one could see anything. And it was going to the third day in that situation.
And Black Lake was going to be the next.
But nobody could convince anyone with the explanations and theories.
And they were still betting on global warming.
But she was coming, at a slow pace and smiling, to the next city where she would make her judgment. She wasn't hungry anymore, because the meal she ate two days ago had been rich. Almost no one had been kept alive in that place. And she was sure that the same would happen to the next and the next cities.
Few would be the chosen ones.
Few would survive.