Winter came 
and all around the table frost cracked and grew like fungus,
icicles crept down from the noses of frozen men and women,
who sat like chiseled marble statues.
Some, with their hands full of sugar plums
some, poised, porcelain teacups halfway to their mouths, 
the liquid turned to ice,
others, their mouths open
waiting for the frozen gingerbread on their silver forks.

The chandelier above was crisscrossed with ice fractals
and sparkling frost.
And the wallpaper, no longer red and gold,
had sunk to silver-blue.

A boy,
the age of twelve,
knelt, mid-struggle 
in the corner of the room
his hands frozen around the leather collar of a weary hound.

The scene was forever still in its time,
the logs in the fireplace would never burn,
the tall clock would never strike to signal the new hour.

And the wind blew in from the North,
with it came bitter laughing.

But the snowflakes remained still outside,
frozen in the air.
The North Wind blew around them,
but nothing stirred. 

And the Moon,
melancholy in her solitude.
Rested her elbows on the shoulders of the cold world,
where the sea--now frozen--had once spilled over the edges.

And then Summer snapped his fingers.

And the world melted.