Snow-globe

I’ve lived in the mountains. Not visited or passed through or stayed for the season, but truly lived where the trees remember more than people do. Woken up to the sound of silence so complete it felt like the earth was pausing to listen. There is something there, something you don’t quite see but always feel. It creeps into your bones no matter the weather, snow or sun, and settles behind your ribs like a secret. The place doesn’t try to impress you. It doesn’t perform. It just exists with such quiet magnitude that you can’t help but feel watched. Not in a fearful way, but in a way that makes you soften, makes you smaller in the most honest sense. You don’t live on a mountain. You live inside it. And some nights, if you’re still enough, you can almost hear it breathing.

A hush lay over the valley, the kind that makes the world feel like it’s holding its breath just long enough for you to hear your own heartbeat. The cottages leaned slightly under the weight of fresh snow, their windows glowing with soft amber light like old stories still being told. Streetlamps scattered warm halos across the powdered ground, casting everything in an orange sepia haze. Some pine trees wore fairy lights like they had dressed up for someone they still believed would return. The river beside the path ran wild, threading through the sleepy town like a pulse too stubborn to slow. The whole place didn’t just exist, it watched.

Adu walked beside Sam, each footstep muffled into softness. Their breath rose in silver wisps, caught the light, and disappeared into the quiet. All around them, the mountains loomed, their outlines blurred by snowfall. She turned to him, eyes still tracing the tree line. “Do you ever get that sudden hit of smallness? That feeling like everything around you is older, bigger, more complete than you could ever be. And you’re just passing through.”

Sam nodded, slow and sure. “Every day. The mountains don’t let you forget. It’s not just a passing thought, it’s something that settles inside you. Like you're living inside someone else’s story. Some mornings I wake up and it feels like I’m inside their lungs. Like I only get to exist when they let me.”

He led her down to the bridge by the river, where the lamps grew quiet and the shadows longer. “When I was nine, Ma sent me to pick asters early one morning. She said the ones before sunrise taste sweeter. I had this old thermos with me, ugly green thing my uncle gave me. I remember opening it and the smell of coffee just filled the air. Not just coffee. Something deeper. Burnt cedar, firewood, that feeling when you hold a cup and everything else falls away. Even with the wind and the water, that smell grounded me. I think that’s when I started falling for it, not just the taste but what it does. Every cup since feels like a reminder that I’m still here, still warm, still allowed.”

He paused. “That same morning I heard something. A low sound, like a breath coming from the hill behind me. Not a voice, not even a sound exactly, more like a shift inside me. Something told me to move. Something as strong as instinct but is more of a hum on the outside, you know? So I ran. Didn’t question it. The next day part of the slope had collapsed right where I’d been. Since then I don’t look at these peaks the same way. They feel alive. Like gods, maybe. Or something older. Still. Aware. Waiting.”

Adu leaned on the railing, her gloves brushing away a layer of snow. “That must change how you feel silence,” she said.

Sam looked out at the black ribbon of the river cutting through white. “It does. Stillness doesn’t feel empty anymore. It feels like it’s listening.”

The mountains above stood like sentinels. The snow kept falling. Fairy lights on the distant trees blinked patiently. Adu’s voice softened. “Sometimes I think the ache comes not from being small, but from knowing we’re unfinished. That we’re just fragments in something much bigger, and we’ll never be able to hold the whole picture. Not all at once. But maybe we don’t have to. Maybe even a single drop, if it falls in the right place, can wake a river.”

Somewhere far beyond where names reach, a hand tilts a snow globe gently. Inside, the little town glows warm beneath the falling white. The river glints like a quiet string of thought. Two figures stand on a wooden bridge, mid-conversation, still as if caught between moments. The snow keeps falling. Light keeps humming. Nothing moves, yet everything breathes. It is a world folded neatly into glass, cupped inside silence, unaware of the gaze outside. Maybe that is the most sacred kind of living, being part of something vast, yet never needing to know who or what is watching. The hand pauses. A soft smile, unseen. Then stillness again.

And maybe this is what occhiolism really is. Not the ache of smallness, but the beauty of placement. Of knowing you are held, even in your own unfinishedness. That somewhere, someone might look in and see your lights flickering, your mountains breathing, your coffee steaming against the cold, and feel something shift. You don’t have to be the story. Sometimes, it is enough to be the snow falling gently inside it.

Listen - I see fire - Ed Sheeran ♥️

Until next time,
Love, always
S