On This Mountain

It is the cold that seeps into you first. It starts in your toes, and slides gently upwards until it catches in your throat. Then it whispers out of you as you breathe a mist, although the chill never passes.
She isn't coming back I think to myself, and while her tracks lie covered under the snow I still find myself staring at them.
We should never have come here, that's what she said. Her first words as she looked at the broken shack that was to be our home. I think that's all she ever saw. I turned when we reached this place and looked out on the layers of snow and stone that stretched as far as the eye could see. There was nothing here but the cold beauty of rock and ice, and that comforted me. There was nothing here but us.
At first I thought that I was not enough for her, that the emptiness had drained her. But perhaps the truth is that I was too much. With nothing but emptiness around us we each seemed so much larger and more amplified. Every tick a din, every twitch a shout. We only had each other and so filled each other's worlds.
I cannot remember what made her leave, what I said to make her go. But the words are unimportant. She knew in that moment that I would never go back. This was no pause while we waited for the others in the valley below to forgive us. We were never going back, could never go back.
Perhaps I am wrong, did they welcome her with open arms when she returned to the valley? Maybe she told them it was my fault alone, and after shaking their fists at the mountain above they drew her close and called her neighbour once more.
Maybe she never went back there, struck out alone for some other place. Does she lie fallen in the snow, turning pale as the white gently consumes her?
No, I must hold my selfish hope, that she has been rejected once more. That the villagers snarled and threw stones upon seeing her and drove her back to me. That she even now fills her lost footsteps up the mountainside. That we are condemned, but condemned together.
So I watch, and wait, feeling the snow creep into my shoes, feeling the chill rising along my body. I will not go inside yet, she is just around the corner. She will be here soon, and I should be here to welcome her. I will not scorn her, tell her how I knew it would be like this. I will wrap a blanket around her and sit close to warm her like we used to.
The cold wraps around me like a cloak, but I will give her more time. She will be here soon. Not long. Just a moment more.