The Snowbound Revelation

Ten years he marched through fire’s ravenous maw,
Where death’s cold breath baptized him into law—
The law of steel, of orders barked in vain,
Of comrades lost to some unmarked campaign.
Yet now, returned, he finds no hearthlit grace,
But hollow winds that haunt his native place.

A letter, sealed with wax of crimson hue,
Had reached his hand as winter’s tempest blew.
No name adorned it, save a faintly traced
Enigma writ in haste, in sorrow laced:
*“To he who treads the path of thorn and stone,
Seek where the peak reclaims what war has sown.”*
No more it spoke, yet in its silence screamed
A voice long buried, half-remembered, dreamed.

Through drifts that swallowed hope and boot alike,
He climbed, each step a battle, each gasp a strike.
The mountain’s breath, a serpent’s frozen hiss,
Coiled round his bones with paralyzing kiss.
Yet onward pressed he, driven by a vow
To unearth the *why* that furrowed now his brow.

At dusk, the clouds unveiled a spectral sight:
A cabin crouched in frail, forsaken light.
Its timbers groaned beneath the snow’s cruel crown,
A relic where the world had settled down.
Within, the air hung thick with decades’ dust,
Yet on the hearth, a candle kept its trust—
A feeble glow that danced with phantom grace,
As though lit hours past, not years, nor days.

Upon a table, warped by frost and years,
Lay scattered pages stained with ancient tears.
A journal’s spine, unclasped by time’s decay,
Revealed a script that sorrow could not sway:
*“Dearest Thomas, though the cannons roar,
I wait where pines guard the sacred shore.
But should the snows claim me ere you return,
Seek not my grave—its epitaph you’ll earn.”*

The soldier’s hands, once steady, now betrayed
A tremor as those damning lines he weighed.
For Thomas was the name his mother gave
Beneath an oak that marked his father’s grave.
No soul alive knew of that hidden glen—
Save one whose voice now whispered through his pen.

A rustle stirred the shadows. Turning slow,
He glimpsed a shape he’d prayed he’d never know:
A woman’s form, her face a moonlit shard,
Her eyes twin pools where grief had carved its yard.
Her lips, though blue as glacial veins, partook
Of words that froze the blood they once forsook:

*“You came,”* she breathed, *“though fate’s design was grim,
To learn the truth your heart could not outrun.
I vowed to wait, though winter’s siege grew dire,
But famine’s teeth proved sharper than love’s fire.
They found me lifeless when the thaw began,
Clutching the vow I’d etched with failing hand.”*

The soldier fell, his knees on splintered wood,
As decades’ silence broke where once she stood.
*“Mother?”* he gasped, though reason screamed *“Illusion!
The dead stir not, save in memory’s intrusion.”*
Yet there she lingered, frost her winding sheet,
Her voice the wind’s lament, both bitter, sweet:

*“Forgive the ruse that drew you to this height—
The letter forged by one who shared my plight:
A nurse who tended me in final throes,
Who heard my tale and vowed the world would know.
But time, that thief, stole her from mortal coil,
Leaving this truth to root in barren soil.”*

The flame expired. The cabin’s walls dissolved
To mist, as though the mountain’s heart absolved
All traces of the love that once took root
Before the world could trample underfoot.
Alone again, with nothing but the page,
He faced the yawning void of grief and rage.

No freedom here, save death’s unfeigned release,
No solace but the snow’s relentless peace.
He strode into the storm’s unblinking maw,
No longer man, but wreckage of the law—
The law of loss, of secrets kept too well,
Of graves unmarked where frozen angels dwell.

The dawn revealed no footprints in the snow,
No trace of where the twin lost souls did go.
But shepherds swear, when winter’s gales ascend,
A voice intones the letter’s cryptic end:
*“Seek where the peak reclaims what war has sown…”*
And on the wind, two sighs are faintly known.