The hot spring under falling snow

The hot spring lies in a hollow among pine trees, a little way up the mountain from the village. It is a round pool of dark, clear water ringed with smooth grey stones, and steam rises from it all the time, drifting up through the branches in slow white clouds.

Tonight it is snowing. The snow falls gently, in large soft flakes that seem to take a long time to come down. They drift out of the dark sky and turn in the lantern light and settle on the pine boughs and the stones and your shoulders.

You step down into the water. It is warm, wonderfully warm, and it rises around your ankles, your knees, your waist, until you are sitting on the smooth stone ledge with the water up to your shoulders. The warmth wraps around you completely. You can feel it seeping into your muscles, into your back and your arms and your hands, loosening everything the day had tightened.

A lantern hangs from a wooden post at the edge of the pool, its light soft and yellow through the steam. Beyond it, the forest is dark and quiet and white. The snow has been falling for hours, and it has muffled everything. There is no sound at all except the faint trickle of the spring where it feeds into the pool, and the tiny, almost silent hiss of snowflakes landing on the warm water and vanishing.

You lean your head back against a stone. It is smooth and cool, rounded by years of water. You look up. The flakes come down toward you out of the dark, slowly, turning, white against the black sky. Some of them land on your face, cool for a moment, and then melt. Some land in your hair. You do not brush them away.

The steam rises around you in soft swirls. It smells faintly of minerals and warm stone and the green scent of pine. When you breathe in, the air is cold and clean. When you breathe out, your breath joins the steam and drifts away up into the snow.

Your hands float in the water, light and loose. Your feet rest on the warm pebbles at the bottom of the pool. It is the kind of warmth that makes your whole body grow heavy and soft, the kind that makes you forget where you end and the water begins.

Somewhere down the mountain, a bell rings once in the village, far away and gentle, and then is still.

After a while, you climb out and wrap yourself in the thick robe waiting on the bench beneath the eaves. The cold air touches your face, but the warmth of the spring stays with you, deep inside. You walk the short path back to the little wooden cabin, the snow creaking softly under your feet.

Inside, there is a low bed piled with quilts, and a small stove glowing in the corner. You slip under the quilts. They are heavy and soft and already warm. Your skin still holds the heat of the spring. Your body feels loose and warm and very tired, in the best way.

Through the window, you can see the snow still falling, slow and white, past the lantern by the pool. The steam still rises. The pine trees stand still and patient under their white coats.

You breathe in. The quilts are warm. You breathe out. The snow falls.

Soft. And soft. And soft.

The lantern glows. The stove glows. Your eyes close.

And under the falling snow, you sleep.