"DO NOT LEAVE your room for the day. I'll come to see how you deal with your new vision when I have a moment. Until then, get used to it. And, most importantly, please don't lose your mind.

Kisses,

Anaissa L. L. A."

That morning, when I rolled over, half asleep on my bed, I found the note on my pillow. That was what woke me up. But what I found...

It isn't a long note, right? Well, it took me more than fifteen minutes to decipher every word on it. All because some strange stuff flew out of it and covered everything on the paper with some kind of opaque mist of particles I couldn't clean off.

The note was one thing but, in fact, everything around me was covered in that strange substance. I wish I could say what color the substance was, but, every time I looked at those flowing particles, I started to see in black and white. I knew they had a color, but my mind was unable to process which one. Everything, from my sheets to the window, from the shelves to my clothes; from the light bulb to the sink in the bathroom; from the room itself to me...

...that was the "Snow". Like Anaissa explained, everything was permeated with it; objects that showed more intention attracted more of the substance, things like my books, my homemade medicines, my paintings...

But the thing that attracted more Snow than anything else, was myself. A storm of particles swirled around me. My eyes attracted some, my hands even more, and my head was the center of the misty particles, which gravitated toward my head from every angle at the pace of my thoughts. Oddly, I didn't feel any kind of physical sensation from them, despite that they clashed against every bit of my body.

It was bewitching but, also a bit burdensome. I couldn't focus on anything because, every time, the very act of thinking about anything in sight excited the storm even more. Even closing my eyes summoned those particles between my eyelids and my eyes.

Anaissa had warned me to brace up for a reason.

But I didn't want to do that. Now I had it in front of me: the reason she could work miracles was in front of me. Now, I couldn't say I didn't see it, so I tried to be rational about it.

I started with my window. How was the world bathed in Snow? In one word: overwhelming. I barely opened the window, so covered in those particles that it was rendered useless to look through and I had to close it right away. The sight was just so impossible to grasp! Every kid! Every worker! Every bird, tree, ant, beetle, or blade of grass! And, even if I couldn't see all of it, the dome attracted even more than the entire forest! It was so extreme that I felt a flood of nausea I had to control with all my will.

Only inside my room I found some semblance of peace, where only my living and conscious mind stirred the particles around. Now, after seeing what the world bathed on Snow felt like, I accepted my surroundings more easily than when I first woke up.

Once I calmed down, I chose something a bit less intense: my bed. Several currents flew from that little space. Some of them were directed to the sheets; others, to every material and every layer of my mattress; then there were those swirling around the structure. So, what did I need to understand about it? Maybe the materials, like Anaissa usually told me? Should I get in mind how every bit of those currents interacted with every chemical and organic material? Yes, that was it! But no: that was just part of the bigger picture. I touched the fabric of the sheets and I felt them still warm, a quality the blanket didn't share. I was able to interiorize material and temperature only by seeing how those particles behave, but that was only a drop in the ocean in how those currents made reality. What more did I need to understand? Their weaving? Yes. The spinning of their fibers? That too. The patterns? The layers? The colors? The lights and shadows that fell upon it? Yes, yes, and yes. Still not enough! What more!? The hands of those who weaved it? The intention of the retailer who sold them? The marks of all the kids that had used it before me? The entire life of the materials from its inception!? Yes, to all of those!

And still it wasn't enough! I still wasn't able to "understand" a stupid bed sheet!

It was useless. I took a deep breath to relax my ever growing headache. And then, I noticed the note Anaissa had left me.

A simple page cut from a notepad of mine, written with my ballpoint pen from my desk. But the Snow around it swirled in a strange manner: the first warning written in capital letters, about not leaving my room, attracted more than the rest of the message. Was it because they were capital letters or because it was more important? More important for the writer. She told me once and again that part of what supported the Snow was the intention of things. I was seeing a message on notepad paper, written with simple ink from a ballpoint pen, written in capitals, and with a sense of urgency and a well needed warning for someone, that someone being me. And it was a message to me only. It was a secret, in my room, in that small part of the Earth, so far from Thaeb; to that girl with black eyes who fell for a woman she barely knew, but who said the most daring and bold things no other one else had ever said to her; an attractive and sexy and smart and long haired and bronze skinned with weird tattoos who held that ballpoint pen and wrote that message for someone who came from another world over a quarrel with her family. Someone she identified as a rebel but who Anaissa had also said was very disciplined, with enough madness to mold the Snow she felt into words in a note for her to understand...

...to understand...

...the words started to flicker in front of me...

...to understand the necessity...

...the Snow around them changed its furious current...

...to understand the necessity of me remaining in my room...

...it jumped from the words to me...

...because she wanted to help me to relax...

I closed my eyes but it didn't help: the Snow I'd just released from those words now wandered freely inside my head, and I couldn't do anything to stop them from resonating again and again inside my skull. It wasn't only three words in capital letters, it was a much more; even more than the long understanding of it and, I knew, it didn't belong to me. But I still had that bit of Snow circling obsessively inside of my body, now jumping from the top of my head to my jaw, after painfully rebounding all the way down my spine with merciless speed and strength.

"When you understand, you will be able to mold" Anaissa said to me again and again in her lessons.

But she never told me how!

Even so, what could I create from a simple warning? It really wasn't that much raw material, after seeing how much Snow other even simpler things claimed. It could be anything! But I didn't even know what I wanted! And, all the while, that damned bit of Snow was turning me insane! It wasn't pain, but it wasn't pleasure either! It felt so stupidly foreign, I wasn't able to integrate it into my own storm. Still, it kept returning to my mind, with obsessive regularity. My mind attracted those few particles and then stopped for a bit, every time they clashed with my thoughts. But my thinking was unclear, diffused, and unfocused. If only... if only I molded my very thoughts I would be able to give those particles a shape. But what? What could I visualize? What...?

I opened my eyes and then...

...silence.

And I meant it: silence. That was my first creation. For a second, everything around me stopped. Every little vibration. For a second, the entire orphanage remained in pure, unadulterated, and sacred silence. The bit of Snow that was tormenting me was gone. But soon after, my mind gave up and the unfathomable dizziness I felt bound me to fall to my pillow again.

If a week of constant study of one single letter was enough to put me to waste; at that minute, "understanding" of those three words left me at the brink of death. For an entire minute I didn't breathe. Even my heart seemed to stop. I felt thirst, hunger, cold and hot, blinded by every bit of light, and overwhelmed by any speck of shadow. And, along with the dizziness, I hallucinated for who knows how long.

And Anaissa did this just like that!? With creations as big as palaces!? What kind of mind does that woman have!?

"Calm down" I felt a comforting hand over my eyes, then over my mouth. In an instant, I felt way better. "Jeez, girl; you seriously need to chill. Like, a lot".

It was Anaissa at the bedside. She kept wearing my uniform and, seemed, at least, to have brought me lunch.

"...hey, Anaissa" I greeted her, poorly trying to sound healthier than I could possibly show. I achieved only looking like a dying patient in her last breath.

"Everyone enjoyed your little show" Anaissa pretended to be cool, but her voice trembled, as if she were containing a huge smile. "Pure silence. You could have created a button, a coin or some water. Even a bit of oxygen would have been enough. But no, you created an abstract concept out of desperation" she caressed my cheeks, tense due to all the emotion she tried to contain. "You're crazier than you look, you know? Everyone felt deaf for a second in a radius of more than one kilometer. It even reached the city. For a first creation, girl, you outdid yourself".

"Why does everything hurt?" head, joints, muscles, even my hair was in pain. Trying to open my eyes tormented me.

"Not everyone is made the same way. And believe me, you DO NOT want to open your eyes right now. If you see the kind of Snow I attract in any given moment, you'll have the mother of all headaches" she took my head and pressed her forehead against mine. "Just try to sleep. I'll keep doing your job until you recover. And then, we'll have a long chat".

I closed my eyes and let slumber overtake me. I only felt the door closing and the Snow's current start to make some sense between my eyelids and my eyes.