Tony
Day 11.
The morning air was so cold it felt brittle, like the crust on a poorly made tart. It was the kind of cold that didn't just sit on your skin; it searched for the gaps in your jacket, biting at the joints and making every breath feel like inhaling ground glass. I stood out front with a shovel, the rhythmic scrape-clink of metal against pavement the only sound in the quiet of Mount Tabor. I was chipping away at the fresh layer of "silver thaw" that had glazed the sidewalk overnight—a treacherous, shimmering skin of ice that made the world look beautiful and feel deadly.
My knuckles were raw, and my breath hitched in the freezing air, but I welcomed the physical burn. It kept me from thinking too much about the calendar. Eleven days. The number was a dull throb in the back of
