the time for death

It was February 2021. Covid - isolation. There'd been some dark days. Snow had fallen day after day and had blocked out the light for 3 long days that week. We'd been housebound all week.  By midday on Wednesday the heavy clouds had cleared and the sunshine felt glorious.  

Bright and illuminating, the sunlight burst in through the all cracks and windows and compelled us to go out and embody this lightness.  The  ice and snow that paved our way was sparkling, lighting up the ground ahead where our feet would tread. Each footstep made a satisfying crunch as our feet compressed the thick layer of snow.  We walked listening to the crunching of each other's footsteps, sometimes in sync, sometimes not. Letting our eyes wander across the water we noticed that the water itself only deflected the sun. The water was black and still. That extraordinary early afternoon winter sunlight had made the water in the river impenetrably dark. There was a black body of water in a bright, white wonderland. 

As the path entered the woods alongside the river we were delighted by the thick layer of snow on the branches of the trees and bushes.  The air was still.  We crunched our way on through the stillness looking up at the blue sky, and across at the black water and down at the sparkling snow covererd ground. We stopped at the point where the land ends where there's just water and birds and sky and earth and it was there that we saw him.  

The time was 2.14 pm. His lips were blue when the rope was untied and his cold body was lowered to the ground to lay on the soft brown earth in the brilliant, early afternoon sunlight.