Josiah Naleworth Prescott to Addison Brooke (excerpt)

[asakiyume]

It appears that frost in this land acts, for reasons not yet know to me (though I have been told the local account, of an owl deity whose wingbeats, passing overhead, quickened the water crystals), much like herbaceous growth in our native land. You will see, in the first figure I include, what is in every respect but that of color a moss-covered boulder.

Snow Moss


The will to grow and spread on the part of the frost here is unnervingly strong: should you set down your pack or rest your walking stick against a rock while you take a sip from your canteen, you will find the frost has opened up leaves and blossoms on the item you laid down. Figure 2 shows just such a tasseled twig:



Finally, for your pleasure, I offer my portrait of the famous Bridge of Feathers, a highly regarded local monument. It is not, as you will perceive, an actual bridge, as only the first span was ever sent across the chasm (I have heard three different versions of why the bridge was never completed, which I shall one day share with you when you are in the mood for tales of terror). The spirit of generative exuberance that possesses the frost in these parts outdid itself when it came to that lone span. A more workaday bridge exists a half-morning's walk to the west, where the chasm is narrower. Frost grows on it as well, but foot traffic keeps it from ever rivalling the magnificence evident here:

Comments

[rustica.livejournal.com]

Wow, those are beautiful! The level of detail in the pictures is incredible.

How cold is it where you are? It's 23 degrees here (celsius, not fahrenheit) and I have been cleaning the house, so they look wonderfully cool and refreshing :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

15 degrees (fahrenheit)! I was expecting colder, but compared with other areas, we're positively balmy :-p

(These photos were taken the same day as the frozen bubbles, when it was below zero F)

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

So beautiful!

Nine

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

So many marvels out there!

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

Beautiful!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I was amazed when I stumbled across these items on my morning walk, some days ago.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Beautiful!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It was a whole alien, fairy world.

[athenais.livejournal.com]

It's magic. It is! I've never seen frost like that.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The draping frost on the boulder was completely new to me--boggling.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

<3 All of this. Especially the bridge of feathers. I would love to know (well, maybe I will regret the knowledge, but I am compelled) why it was not completed...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

One account is straightforward and merely involves repeated falls into the chasm, with the bodies never recovered as they were claimed by the frost. A second says that the Owl Itself picked off the workers, one by one, until the task was abandoned. This seems unlikely, though, because if the Owl objected to a bridge across the chasm, why permit the lesser bridge, to the west? Finally, it's said that the irrepressible frost, invigorated by what it had created across the chasm, took to flowering and spreading even on moving objects, which is to say, the workers themselves: first their coats and gloves and boots, then their eyebrows and eyelashes, and at length their lips and cheeks and, with each inhaled breath, the lining of their nose, their windpipe, et cetera--the effect being essentially that of the Temperance bug from your neck of the woods.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

*shiver*

They called it Francesca's Frost, though it was mostly for alliterative purposes, or perhaps after one of the masons. No one quite recalls her fate, though, just a sense that it is not quite so straightforward as, for instance, Lou Gherig's...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Ahahahahahaaha …. *gulp*

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Sorry, alliteration takes me places...

[cafenowhere.livejournal.com]

So glad Erik asked; I was dying to know. Deliciously spooky!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

excellent icon :-)

[duccio.livejournal.com]

Wowee! Bridge of feathers.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I was an entranced tourist when I saw it.

[sovay]

(though I have been told the local account, of an owl deity whose wingbeats, passing overhead, quickened the water crystals)

Prrrrt.

I love the bridge.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think the bridge should be in the dictionary as an illustration of the adjective "baroque."

[origa.livejournal.com]

So utterly exquisite. Here are some haiku for you in return for this gift of beauty:

roadside boulders --
their snow moss quickened
by an owl's wingbeats

on a traveler stick
the frost quickly opens up
leaves and blossoms

on the lone bridge span
the frost possessed by a spirit
of exuberance


:)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh I love what you have created! Thank you for this gift!

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

So pretty.

Just gales, torrential rain and floods here. Your old stamping grounds in the west country are having a terrible time. :o(

Dorset's flooding

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes I know; it's really worrying :-( Even when the rain stops, the ground is so waterlogged--how long will it be for the water to recede?

Re: Dorset's flooding

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Probably months.

We live on the chalk and the aquifers are so full that new springs are forming!

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

The Bridge of Feathers! I've always wanted to see it. That chasm looks much scarier in real life than I imagined.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Mysterious steam rises from it. I asked if anyone had mapped the chasm floor and received only shocked looks by way of reply.

[zyzyly.livejournal.com]

a world of wonders!

I've spent the morning reading about what people are seeing and finding in the cold, rather than just saying, "It's cold!".

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

So great that people are taking this adventure in weather in stride! (Helps to have a warm place to escape to…)

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

That frost is so feathery! Even if it goes below freezing here, the air is so damp that we don't get formations like that.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was an amazing display--warmish damp air interacting with very, very cold, dry air, I guess, produced it.

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

Such beauty in both prose and pictures.

Josiah is lucky to have witnessed such...and survived it. Tales of wonder and terror, a traveler who must know both is he!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Josiah is an avid traveler--like many of my friends!

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

(I take it that Josiah Naleworth Prescott and his correspondent are your own?)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yes :-)

[dudeshoes.livejournal.com]

You are so good at capturing different styles of writing!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I love this old-fashioned way of speaking! It's fun to imitate.

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

My pleasure ♥

[inspirethoughts.livejournal.com]

Very beautiful and detail. I should go out and take some pics too...but its so cold...wish i was brave like you.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed <3