Inclination

Wintry Landscapes, Wine Pairings, Works of Art

Harry's majestically booted feet crunch through the endless acres of pristine snow: crystalline, spotless and baron. His footsteps echo within the confines of his industrially warm, black hooded jacket. The white rabbit fur trimmed hood warms his cheeks and forehead to the point of breaking a sweat on his hairline.

The scenery is prairie flat, no soil or plant life visible as far as the eye can see. The line where the horizon meets the sky is a brilliant golden yellow, the sun a perfect circle with outstretched rays as it either rises above or sinks below the threshold of earth. Harry has no idea what time of day it is or which direction he's walking, he can see no cliffs or valleys or hills in any orientation he faces.

Stratus clouds cover the entire sky in wide splaying dots and bursts; the expanse of the heavens grading from a blue so pale it could nearly be considered white, to a blindingly royal blue directly overhead. Harry spins in a circle as he keeps his nose pointed towards the very center of the sky, hot breath leaving his mouth in visible puffs as it vaporizes before his eyes.

The ground begins the rumble beneath his feet and he spreads his arms out wide to grip onto anything close by except there is nothing there. The roar of the snowy rock beneath his feet garners strength until he's losing footing and falling backwards onto his bottom, his boots kicking up below him and rolling him onto his back.

He sits up just in time to watch the land to his left split and crack violently, presenting itself as a solid mass of ice before it raises a few feet in the air and shatters, breaking into a thousand pieces as it falls into the Arctic Ocean below. He crawls on his shaky hands and knees until he reaches the edge of a newly conceived ledge and peers past the precipice.

The freshly formed ocean is punctuated with floating bricks of ice and Harry is knocked backwards onto his ass once more when the enormous and fantastic black tail of an Orca whale breaks the surface tension of the water and fans out before him. It hovers in the air with streams of frigid water pouring down for a magnificent ten to twenty seconds before it disappears back into the icy depths once again.

Harry scrambles backwards in a crab walk before twisting his torso and pulling himself to his feet. He brushes fluffy snow from his jacket and his black jeans, flicking the hood from his head to toss his hair forward and brush his curls clean, smoothing it back away from his face when he feels satisfied with the treatment. He keeps his gaze glued to the ocean for a matter of seconds until he is assured that the whale probably has decided to stay underwater for the time being.

Another grumble below his feet shakes him down again to his hands and knees, this time the sphere around him changes drastically as the earth shifts in anger. Sharp mountains of jagged crystal quartz spike upwards and are birthed from the tundra around him, creating a landscape of a craggy frozen alpine right before his eyes.

His hands slip out from underneath him and send him chin first into the ethereal snow, pulling a curse from his mouth as he rubs his sore jaw and settles back onto his haunches once the ground ceases quaking. His eyes are drawn into the distance where two pointed peaks of lucent stone have unearthed and created a narrow aisle between them, a path of snow jutting in a trail towards his hunched figure.

He squints and draws himself to his knees, his hand raising to his brow to shield the sun from his eyes in order to focus on a small, clean silhouette approaching him from between the quartz mountains.

Each step that the figure takes creates a sprawling blossom of royal purple viola that spread around their feet into the virgin snow, creating the only pop of color aside from the sky for miles. The person adorns a billowing, eggshell white gown that brushes their bare feet and carves a groove into the snow behind them with the train.