By the side of the road, just a few feet away, like an animal that had been run over, picked up and thrown aside to make way, lies the body of a soldier. When he froze to death, in the madness where the cold was burning him like fire, he must have taken off his clothing, piece by piece, as he walked and stumbled and then laid down to sleep and he still lay there as if only sleeping, beautiful like the dead look only in paintings, his skin more brilliant than the snow, his body without a scar, velvety soft, and his hair crowned by ice crystals. No one could be moved to bury him and day after day the men passing by had to see him there and not one could avert his eyes from the promise in his faint smile, to one day die no more.
Frozen
Published
Reichblr Ficathon 