#writephoto: Snow giants

This short piece is for Sue Vincent’s Thursday photo prompt. It’s a really beautiful photo, but somehow it didn’t inspire a specific story, just this rather general disaster scenario.

Once it was a land of rich meadows, but the mountains are cruel. Each winter the snow giants hurl tempests of ice and snow into the valleys and the meltwater floods the plain in spring. The meadows are full of water now. The cattle’s hooves rot in the damp mud and the wind sings, unbroken across the plain where nothing grows except marsh grass.

Every winter, the mountains stride closer, and in the spring their heads are wreathed in freezing mist that the sun never warms. The lands of men shrink inexorably and their children die of damp fever. Soon, perhaps, the winter will come that will never end, spring will never thaw the ice that covers the plain, and the snow giants will inherit the earth.