Happy Mother's Day!

Wishing my mother and all the mothers of the world a very happy Mother's Day.

Thank you.

Flash Fiction Fridays, #17

No word generator this time. This flash fiction was written as a response to the following image, found at flashfictionfridays@wordpress.com

The Snow Wife

Above the clouds, above the tree-line we hunted. 

Just a man and his son, tracking the footprints of a lost mother in the snow.

Pumori, Ama Dablan, Cho Oyu, 

Chomolungma. 

We searched the giants. She wasn’t there.

Once, there had been a fall.

Once there had been shelter, a cave of ice.

One night spent with a woman, a demon, 

trying to keep warm in all that whitened cold.

One year later, I climbed again. 

Reached the summit, descended again into the white, into the blind 

desire of a satisfied dream.

Awoke, in a tent this time, 

to find a child by my side, 

a human infant with frost-white hair and eyes of ice.

My child.

The union of a peak-bagging mountaineer 

and the lost mother of the snows.

One slow heartbeat and those glacial eyes,

one small cold hand in mine,

nothing left of mother but spindrift in the snow.