In Opal Twilight
Just after last Christmas I completed a new story called In the Palace of the Lost Winter Stars, unfortunately I failed to finish it in time for the anthology it was intended for, so at the moment it's awaiting a home. However, I felt that the first few hundred words, with a little editing and a fresh ending, would make a decent little prose poem. So here it is. The ending here, by the way, is closer to my original intention for the story: the longer piece - over 5000 words - has a completely different dénouement. In Opal Twilight I walked out into the white and wondrous garden with my visitor; out into the transformed world that was now filled with the rose-opal luminescence of twilight, for a fine snow had fallen heavily for half the day. We strolled to the end of the pallor-mantled garden and through the black gate in the white yew hedge, then across the lane, now hidden beneath a crisp mask of ermine, and so into the wood beyond. My pale breath was the pallid b