Flash fiction: A Winter’s afternoon

“Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea after all,” Anise muttered as she looked out the window. She could see nothing but white. Snow was falling fast and furious this lonely winter’s afternoon.  Already three inches had fallen in as many hours and they were saying the storm wouldn’t be entirely over until sometime tomorrow night. They were talking feet of snow now, not inches.

“What the heck was I thinking?” she said aloud. “I could have waited until spring to run off. I’m so stupid!”

But it hadn’t been stupidity that made her run away from her warm tropical home to this frozen, isolated, forbidding place.  Her broken heart was to blame.  

Jeese’s last words still echoed in her head. “Go! I can live quite happily without you.”

She needed to get as far away from him as she could just to keep sane and this was the place her circling finger landed when she closed her eyes in front of a map.

She turned away from the view, wringing her hands. Would the power go out? Would she have enough wood to keep warm? She stared at the huge stack of logs by the door and calculated how many hours warmth there was inside. There was twice that outside, too.  She would be fine.

She had more than enough provisions, too. Her landlady had warned her how things were here. 

“When you’ve lived in the sticks as long as I have,” Mrs. Jerkins said, “You learn to keep freezer and pantry full and hunker down when it’s too beastly even for beasts!” 

Anise had followed the advice, but still…

“It would be different if I weren’t all alone,” she said.

The golden retriever by her side looked up reproachfully.

“Goldie, you know I love you, but…” she said just as they heard a loud crash outside. “Omigosh! What was that?”

She ran to the window. She could just make out a crumpled car against a tree. 

Then someone pounded on the door. She jumped in fright.

“Anise!”

She opened the door and gasped. “Jesse!”

His arms went around her crushing her to him. “I’m sorry, I was wrong. I can’t live without you. Marry me?”

Even with the snow circling around them and the blistering cold wind whipping inside the cabin, Anise had never felt warmer.