The wind howled, kicking up flurries of soft white snow and flinging them about, the airborne flakes so thick that it was impossible to see even a few inches in front of one's face. It was bitingly cold, and any creature with any sense whatsoever was holed up inside, where they were protected from the deep freeze. The ground was hard, frozen solid, and some of the trees, unable to stand against the strong winds and the weight of the snow that had settled in their branches, had fallen, their bare trunks' jagged edges sticking up out of the white snow.
Deep within the snow, inside of a protective sac, new life waited for the cold to recede. Protected from potential foes, it was forgotten, buried, the warmth within insulated by the very blanket of cold that kept all others in their own homes, the dreamer within feeling nothing more than a soft, cooling embrace, like a kiss on a fevered brow...Winter's Kiss.