The snow fell silently from the agitated sky. Grey clouds swirled like a whirlpool around our heads as we peered into the maelstrom. The whole world was muted as the flakes painted the ground without a sound. The sparkling fragments kissed our faces, melting on impact, dripping down our eyelashes, reddening our cheeks, trailing down our necks, before dropping away to the rolling snow dunes that surrounded our legs.
She bent down to run her hand through the snow. So soft and light, her fingers created troughs as they plowed slowly through the shimmering surface. Each perturbation seemed to ripple through the surrounding snow, as if she was swirling her finger in a placid pool of water, the waves traveling through the surrounding aqua before scattering off of some distant shore.
"You know what I think snow is?" She asked.
"What?"
"Sky fossils." She peered up at me, still running her fingers through the powder. I couldn't help but smile.
"Sky fossils?" I asked.
"Sky fossils," she repeated, nodding sagely.
Silence followed for a few moments as I gazed at her.
"When we're young," she continued, "we're taught that every snow flake is unique. Each and every one of them has an utterly distinctive structure, never before seen by the eyes of humanity. When we learn this, we always look up at the sky, enraptured, wondering 'How is this possible?' There's so many of them!'"
Now she was pushing her hand into the snow, compressing the fluffiness beneath her fingers, feeling as it hardened, as millions of tiny fractals conglomerated into one, smooth surface reminiscent of glacial ice.
"As we get older, I think we forget how beautifully complex each one of these billions and trillions of tiny, insignificant specks of crystallized water are. We become accustomed, and they become pedestrian, just another mundanity in modern life."
Her eyes sparkled gleefully as she threw a handful of snow into the air. It blew around us, swirling in a misshapen ball around our heads like a school of fish, herded by chirping dolphins.
"Whenever I see snow, I like to remind myself of how enchanting, how charming, how unspeakably lovely each minute flake is... The tiniest pleasures in life are what make it worth living. I love the snow for no other reason than the simple joy of basking in its vivacious, resplendent beauty. "
"But why sky fossils?" I asked.
"Because each snowflake is made of water which has been recycled an incalculable number of times. The particles that make up every blizzard around the world existed at the very beginning of the universe. Billions of years of history live on in their molecules, preserved in each delicate structure. They are the carriers of history, the keepers of antiquity. In that way, they are like fossils. By looking closer, we can look back."
"I like 'sky fossils,'" I mused aloud. "It's quixotic."
"Why thank you," She said, smiling.
"I don't know," she continued, "I think part of me just likes that snow is cyclic. It falls to earth, plays whatever role it has to play in nurturing life, before returning to the sky."
"'Ashes to ashes', I suppose."