I'm eight years old, and my mother calls me into her bedroom. "Your father and I are getting a divorce," she tells me, "It doesn't have anything to do with you. We just don't love each other anymore." I lock myself in my room for two days, living on my stockpile of Christmas candy. That night, we have the worst blizzard in our area in recorded history. The cold seeps into my bones, but it lights a fire within me.

~ * ~

I'm eleven years old, being taunted on the playground. "Honey doesn't have a daddy," they say, "Honey's dad left her because he didn't want her." Thunder rumbles overhead, and the subsequent downpour sends the other children running for shelter. I lay in the mud and cry, wishing with every ounce of internal strength that the rain would wash away whatever toxic part of me made him leave.

~ * ~

I'm sixteen years old, and my mother is yelling at me. "You were always difficult!" she screams. "Making a fuss, sulking, never having any friends! Your father should have taken you when he left." I storm out, slamming the door behind me.

That night, a tornado hits Brookefield county. My mother's house is torn apart, and she is found injured in the basement. The doctors say she's in a coma, that she will likely never wake up. I bring her flowers on the first Saturday of every month, and every time I visit, it rains.

~ * ~

I'm eighteen years old, and I've been accepted into the college of my dreams. Living on my own, with no parents to help me, I've managed to earn near-perfect grades and universities across the country vie for my enrollment. I go for a walk in a deserted meadow, lying down in the grass and enjoying the sweet aroma of flower blossoms in the air. The sun has never shone so brightly.

~ * ~

I'm nineteen years old, and I had a nightmare last night. The kind where you wake up shaking, on the verge of tears, with your heart pounding in your chest. The police said there were mysterious cases of spontaneous combustion all over the shitty, numerous building reduced to piles of ash overnight. They can't determine the cause, but I know better. The chill in my bones has returned.

~ * ~

"I need to do this," I tell Casey, "I'm taking a semester off and travelling. I'm about to turn twenty and I've still seen almost nothing of the world."

Casey looks like a puppy who's just been told she can't have a treat, her big blue eyes sparkling with tears. "But where are you going?"

I look down at my fingernails, bitten down until they bled. "Away," I tell her. "I'm going camping for awhile. I need to find myself, and I can't do it when I have school and work distracting me."

We say our tearful goodbyes the next day, and I pack up my SUV with essentials and depart. I follow street signs down winding dirt roads and abandoned highways, past houses that haven't been touched in years and forests so dense that light never reaches the dirt below. I park at the bottom of a mountain and leave my car, knowing it will be safe enough in the wilderness, with no people around to rob me.

I pack a backpack and hike up the mountain, panting and sore by the time I reach the peak. Although it's August, the wind at the top is biting. Tears run down my cheek, provoked by the bitter breeze. I close my eyes and breathe deeply, telling myself to calm down.

The wind dies down around me, the sun peeking through the clouds on the horizon. The sky is streaked with colors: orange, pink, yellow, and deep blue. Stars twinkle in the East, and I can just barely see the lights of home. I feel tranquil, for once, mesmerized by the beauty before me.

I wake up the next morning in the cold. I unzip the door to my tent and realize the ground is covered in snow. I squint, peering over the mountaintop to the ground below, and realize it isn't just the mountain that's covered in snow -- it's the whole area.

I receive a call from Casey telling me there's a foot of snow on the ground back in the city, that no one can explain this freak weather in the middle of August. I only know one thing: my heart wasn't icey last night. So who caused this weather?

"Honey?"

I whirl around to see a middle-aged man in a policeman's uniform approaching me slowly. I'm flooded with emotions, unsure of what to say. "Dad?"

Thunder rumbles low in the distance, and grey clouds obscure the cold sunlight. I'm upset, and the sky knows it. My dad freeze in place, merely five yards from me. "Honey, please be calm. I don't want to get stuck up here in a storm."

"What are you doing here?" I ask softly.

"We had calls at the station of a car headed up here into the mountains with your mom's plates. I - I know she's been in the hospital for a few years now, so I thought it might be you." He looks sad, apologetic even, and I feel a foreign emotion for him: pity.

"After I heard about that freak tornado," he continues, "I knew you must have inherited my gift?"

"A gift?" I say quietly, and then louder, "A gift?! More like a nightmare! I can't control it, I can't do anything about it, and when people die because of it I feel the weight of their souls on my shoulders." I'm sobbing now, hysterical, and hail begins to pelt us, ice bouncing off my tent and gathering in the hood of my sweatshirt.

"Stop it." My father's voice is low, stern, and the hail stops immediately. "You think you don't have control over it, but you do. You have control over your emotions, and that's really the root of all of this."

I'm still sobbing, the clouds overhead dark and gloomy. "I don't know how, Dad! I've been on my own for years, my life is in perpetual turmoil, and my emotions can't stay stable for five fucking minutes! You left me, and then mom left me, and you're telling me just control my emotions? As if it's that easy?"

He covers the last few feet of space between us and pulled me into his arms as I cry. "It's okay, Honey. I'm here now, and I'll take care of you." He pulls back, looking me in the eye. "You've become a very powerful woman, and once you learn to harness this power you can do some real good with it. I believe in you."

As we sit on the wet ground, delicate snowflakes begin to fall around us, and I realize something: I finally feel at peace. "Why is it still snowing?" I ask.

"The snow isn't caused by upset, Honey, it's caused by tranquility," my dad explains. "When you've truly found yourself, when your life is the way you want it to be, you'll find that it will snow a lot in your town."

I catch a snowflake in my hand and observe the tiny geometric patterns laced into it, before it melts into my skin. We continue to watch the snow fall, drifting silently through the air like a feather on the breeze. I am at peace; the world is at peace.

~ * ~

I'm twenty-five years old, and there have been no freak storms or weather accidents in over two years. Casey and I are roommates, and she knows exactly what to do whenever thunder cracks overhead or rain falls on the pavement.

I get a call from the hospital telling me to come immediately. I'm running down the street, slipping on the wet pavement and trying to keep my cool. It's okay, Honey, I tell myself, Everything is okay.

I burst through the door to the hotel room and my mother is sitting up in bed, finally awake. The next few hours are a blur of emotion. I can't stop crying and laughing, and my mom needs to know everything that has happened to me in the past nine years. The sun shines through the rain outside, a rainbow streaking across the sky over the hospital. People keep telling me they have never seen colors so vibrant.

It's dark when I leave the hospital, allowing my mother a bit of peace in which to recover. As I walk down the street, the rain turns to snow, falling from the heavens as if it's been sent by the angels. Five years later, I've found myself, and I've made peace with who I am.

Streetlights illuminate sparkling crystals in the air, and I finally understand why snow symbolizes peace and beauty. When I am at peace, the world is at peace. Now the cold in my bones is gone, and I am very much at peace.