how many smiles will hide the tears? ;; [open]

[Noah Lawrence]

It was a typical winter day in Alaska: cold, cold, and, oh wait, more cold.
How on earth orange trees, a citrus fruit and a tropical plant, could possibly survive in Blackbriar with these frigid temperatures was completely beyond Noah. Maybe it had something to do with all of the mutants roaming around...

As was custom for the young adult in the evenings, Noah was out and about for one reason or another, and had ended up at this orange grove. He had actually been headed towards Elkwood Forest like he normally did, turned to go back for coffee or hot chocolate since a bitter wind was blowing from the north, and had somehow come here. Since he had never been in the orchard and could almost deal with the wind by now (not), he decided to stop and explore.
Curiosity killed the cat, right? But never before it got to see the sights, and that would be enough for Noah.

Packed in a great bulk of clothes, it would be hard to believe that Noah would be shivering underneath the combination of two pairs of jeans, a parka, sweatshirt, t-shirt, and a long-sleeved top. This is without even considering the blue-and-white scarf wrapped snugly around his neck and the lower half of his face, hiding his nose, a hat, and fuzzy earmuffs.
Just because something is difficult to understand doesn’t mean that it can’t happen, and Noah was quaking as though he was having a seizure and his outfit was too bulky to allow him enough room to fall onto the snow or really start convulsing.

Turning his back to the breeze and raising his hand to cough dryly into it, Noah noticed something. He had forgotten to wear gloves, and there was snow on the ground! That was stupid of him. It was also silly of him to have not realized this earlier, but maybe it’s because his fingers were numb by now or else because he had them shoved into his pockets. Having nothing better to do, Noah could only cup his hands together and place them against his lips, exhaling his own hot breath to warm them up.
It... sort of worked.
Bah. He’d be fine as long as he didn’t shove his fingers into a pile of snow.

Without anything else to do and having seen as much of the cluster of trees that he really cared to see, Noah half-sat and half-fell against a tree, landing at the base. Leaning against the trunk, he gazed out at his surroundings. At least the night was pretty, despite all the frostiness. If he died out here for one reason or another he could see beauty before his life failed.
Actually, he probably would die out here, because there was a small chance that he could manage to lift himself out of the snow with the limited use of his arms that his mass of clothing gave him.
Too late now to think about getting himself up, seeing as how he was already sitting down.

Okay... now what?
Usually he mused out in the wilderness or wandered around or read a book, but he was feeling so much like a block of ice that thinking seemed impossible, waddling around in the grove was not a very exciting-sounding venture, and he could probably not turn a page with his stiff fingers without them falling off.
He might have been tempted to try to push himself up and pick an orange off of a tree, except for the fact that the fruits probably had freezer burn or something and jumping around snow-laden branches would likely cause them to dump a load of ice on top of his head. That would be unpleasant.

Finally, Noah decided on remaining in his place and growing some flowers. He hadn’t actually practiced with his useless powers in a while, so this might be beneficial to him. Maybe there was a possibility of the activity warming his fingertips.
Forced to uncomfortably shift his entire body back and forth in order to even lift his arm over a patch of ice, Noah quickly became disenchanted with the idea of putting any energy forth to maintaining life in some stupid blossom, but did not lower his hand. Might as well at least push one plant from the cold, unforgiving permafrost. Sighing a thin mist into the air, he flexed his fingers and suddenly a small green stem was sprouting from the ice and a bright orange blossom burst forth at the top of the stem, hardly having time for the bud to develop before it had opened. The flower itself was a Sulfur Cosmos (or Cosmos sulphureus), and the fiery color was made to seem even brighter by the blanket of snow that it was set upon.

Noah glanced away from the flower for a minute and by the time that he turned his head back, the thing had already wilted and died, obviously not able to be supported in the caking of ice. That was fast.
After glaring imperiously at the flower, Noah moved his hand slightly to the left with some difficulty, and lowered his hand an inch, bending his fingers as if he was half-preparing to pick up a pinch of snow between them. Once again a plant sprouted from the earth, but this time it was more of a shrub rather than a single bloom. Among grayish-green thorns appeared a mixture of white and pale pink blooms, very distinguishably roses.

Because maintaining a shrub in several inches of snow when you can barely move yourself or prevent yourself from freezing to death is a much more difficult action than just one Cosmos (although still not that hard, since, seriously, flowers?), Noah laid his head back and rested it against the trunk of the tree, closing his eyes.
After a moment, Noah opened his mouth and began to sing quietly to himself, though his voice rasped forth with roughness shaped by misuse, his fingers twitching as he held his arm suspended over the shrubbery.
There were no words to the melody except for nonsense kinds of sounds like “na” or “la” or “do” or “re”, and there was hardly a discernible tune; however, when his throat had become used to the idea of letting sound out, the song was somehow a pretty one. His voice happened to not be deep for a man of his age, but was more of a tenor at best, and a low alto at worst, as if he had never exactly hit puberty.

The scarf around his mouth muffled the music, but it still could have carried through the entire grove, if only softly. And, perhaps, the song, even without its words that could have been used as commands, requested a certain amount of emotion for it. It may have stunned someone into wondering where it came from or who made it, and it may have even been saying beneath the delicate melody an appeal: “Love the song, love the singer.”
Noah wouldn’t have wanted that message, but he didn’t practice his singing enough to keep it out of his voice.

Despite the Goosebumps that raised across his skin with the cold air and the fact that he could barely move his limbs and that he was stuck wherever and it was getting to be nighttime, Noah was content enough, for once. The evening was a pretty one even if it was dark and the snow did swirl down. The growing of such blossoms did set a warm feeling on the fingers of his one hand, although that was likely the rest of his body heat releasing itself through that same location.
Best of all, he was completely alone.




ooc:// Okay, this is really bad. Dx Rawr.

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