Settling in with the Setting Sun

Her toes curled in her damp socks, drying in front of the little space heater beneath her desk. A cup of coffee-milk (to call it milk-coffee was to stretch towards fantasy) moved around her face: first to her left cheek, then her forehead, over to the right cheek, her lips, and then back again in endless circles. A blanket resplendent in the maize-and-blue of her alma mater was layered over her knees while a mighty 20lb weighted blanket settled over her exhausted shoulders. Her hair, once gloriously the source of a dirty blonde’s vanity, was growing as lank and as dark as her seasonal mood, but thankfully well out of the way thanks to Ma’s old no fuss no muss, messy bun technique. Yes, she had finally settled with the setting sun, just about ready to really dive into a long-neglected watchlist, when a text alert from her sometimes-on-sometimes-very-off “lovely” popped into view from the corner of her eye:

Pub? ;P

Without setting down her coffee, she reached over to respond, and gently flicked the phone off her desk, only momentarily upsetting the cat lounging beside the balcony window.

“Hush now, darling. It’s time for a movie.”

Snow brings a hushed cold,
Yet even so, I can hear,
Our hearts beating time.

Prompt: from the kind writers over at the pub, dVerse, “Winter” as part of their Haibun Monday Series, celebrating the chill of my most beloved of seasons.

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