The evening was quiet. Francis heaved a deep sigh of impatience, moving both hands against one another in a vain effort to drive back the cold of winter. Every warm breath escaped his lips as a cloud of drifting, fading smoke, soft against the black sheet of the sky, obscuring his vision. He visibly flinched with every stifled crunch his shoes would create in the hardened, frozen ground, and at every snap of a twig beneath his weight as he continued almost wading his way through the depths of the freshly fallen snow, picking his feet over the mounds and observing them vaguely.
He despised bitter nights like this with no mistake; even the gentle accumulation of snow upon his head was irritating, unappreciated, as the cold would seep into what felt like his very skull, drawing shuddering breaths from lips gone pale from cold and discontent.
To distract himself if only for moments at a time , he was forced to urge his own mind into an imagined lull of peace, but the soothe of a warmer season was long vanished. Francis could very easily say at that moment that having accidentally taken the wrong route home - and having been delayed on his return trip by at least half an hour - had not been enjoyable at all. He held one arm stiffly above his eyes, defending against the softened glare of the ice at his feet although, he found the moonlight to have thinned at this hour , the other hand buried deep in the pocket of his trousers, as if searching for some semblance of heat that he already indisputedly knew would not be there.
The snow was early for the year. Besides, he knew very well that none of his problems regarding the strengthing cold could be solved by remaining out in the snow and ice, and that his return to his home would need to be made precipitately.
With a slightly tentative step forwards, he finally lowered his hands to slide them both into his coat's folds, deciding it was largely pointless to attempt to keep back the snow from reaching to smother his limbs. It was only after another good half an hour of seemingly meaningless walking about that he reached his home, numbed and starving, with fingers urging to hold themselves before a glowing fire.
