The Path
It was a calm, empty morning. She’d woken up at six o clock just before anyone else. Everything had been silent. From the windowless room where she slept, she’d walked right through the kitchen. This morning, like every other morning, she’d walked up to the window hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun on the dirty brown bricks of the internal courtyard. Usually, she’d see an overcast day, the grey flat clouds making the morning look almost indistinguishable from a late afternoon. But today something had been different. During the night snow had fallen onto the city, smooth and gentle, and had covered the courtyard with a beautiful mantle of white to mark the first day of the New Year. She’d been surprised to see it: snow made everything look a bit more beautiful; it covered what was imperfect and it made it pure. In the few months she’d been here she hadn’t seen anything but rain. And now this. She’d been staring at the window for a while when it had occurred to her to go for a