Snowfall and Scavenged Light

Jeff’s breath plumed out in ragged, white clouds, instantly snatched and dispersed by the biting wind that clawed at the exposed seams of his scavenged thermal jacket. The air itself felt brittle, a fragile, static charge crackling beneath the layer of perpetually falling, almost granular snow. He pulled the collar higher, the stiff, synthetic fabric scraping a rough patch of stubble along his jawline. His fingers, already numb despite the patched-up gloves, ached with a deep, bone-weary cold that seeped from the very ground up through the scuffed soles of his synthetic boots. Every crunch of the frozen street beneath his weight was a dull ache echoing up his spine, a testament to the ceaseless, indifferent grip of this winter. It was the deepest freeze in cycles, the news-feeds, when they flickered into existence, had warned.

Christmas. The word itself felt like an artefact, a polished piece of pre-Collapse history, fragile and distant, something remembered from holographic projections that stuttered through the city's ancient, decaying grids. He remembered, or thought he remembered, the shimmering, impossibly vibrant green of a real tree, fragrant with pine resin, its needles soft beneath his small fingers. That was before the big dark, before the network choked, before the corporations retreated into their shielded enclaves, leaving the rest to scavenge and freeze. His memories were mostly just flashes: the warmth of a simulated fire, the synthetic taste of spiced cider, the almost unbearable brightness of a million tiny, winking lights strung over everything. It wasn't real, not like the biting reality of the wind-whipped street now, but the feeling lingered, a ghost of comfort.

Sara was a few paces ahead, her smaller frame cutting a determined path through the snowdrifts that had piled against the skeletal remains of what might have once been a luxury speeder. Her own jacket, a patchwork of reflective foil and scavenged ballistic nylon, shimmered faintly in the dim, perpetual twilight. She moved with a liquid grace born of necessity, her feet finding purchase on slick ice and loose rubble with an almost unconscious precision. She didn’t talk much about the ‘before’. Most didn’t. What was the point? The future was a question mark, the present was a struggle, and the past was a weight that could drag you down deeper than any snowdrift.

He watched her stop, peering up at the twisted metal lattice of an old comms tower, its upper sections lost in the low-hanging cloud cover. The tower groaned, a metallic sigh, as the wind buffeted its corroded frame. This was what they did: they scavenged. For food, for water, for tech, for anything that could extend their meagre existence by another day, another hour. And today, Sara had decided, they were looking for 'lights'. Christmas lights. The idea felt absurd, a futile gesture against the overwhelming apathy of the ruined city, yet a small, stubborn ember of curiosity had been lit within him, too.

He caught up to her, his breath rasping in his throat. "Anything?" he asked, the words feeling clumsy, heavy in the cold air.

She pointed a gloved finger towards a dark opening, a gaping maw in what used to be a ground-floor loading bay of a decrepit corporate tower. Its façade, once glass and gleaming chrome, was now a shattered mosaic of broken thermopane and rust-streaked concrete. "That building," she said, her voice low, almost swallowed by the wind. "Old Neo-Data Corp. Might have an abandoned server farm. Power converters. Maybe… decorations."

Jeff grunted. Neo-Data Corp was a tomb. Deep underground, perhaps, there might be intact sections, but the upper floors were exposed, gutted. "Cold up there," he murmured, more to himself than to her. He remembered the last time they’d tried a high-rise, the wind whistling through missing walls, turning internal stairwells into frozen wind tunnels. It was a good way to lose fingers, or worse.

"We need them," Sara said, her tone firm, unwavering. She didn't elaborate. She rarely did. But he understood. It wasn't just about 'lights'. It was about more. It was about pushing back against the encroaching dark, against the constant, gnawing emptiness. It was about memory, even if that memory was borrowed, or imagined.

They navigated the debris-strewn entrance, stepping over twisted rebar and shattered plasteel panels. The air inside was still frigid, but the relentless, cutting wind was dulled to a low moan that echoed through the cavernous space. Their footfalls echoed, too, a hollow, lonely sound in the vast silence. Their headlamps, powered by scavenged energy cells, cut narrow, bobbing tunnels through the gloom, picking out the skeletal remains of desks, overturned chairs, and long-dead terminals. The walls were peeling, ancient corporate slogans barely legible beneath layers of grime and damp.

Climbing the Forgotten Towers

The climb was relentless. They used service shafts, their hands finding precarious holds on rusted ladders and exposed conduit. Jeff felt a dull burn in his shoulders, a familiar ache. Every floor was a carbon copy of desolation. Empty cubicles, scattered holopads, the faint, metallic tang of decay and old electronics. The silence, broken only by their heavy breathing and the occasional scrape of their boots, was absolute. It pressed in, heavy and suffocating.

He thought again of Christmas, of his grandmother’s old, cracked data-slate, playing ancient carols. He couldn't remember her face anymore, not clearly, just the faint, sweet scent of something baking, the low thrum of the building’s atmospheric processors. A ghost in his memory, a warmth he couldn't quite grasp. This cold, though. This was real. The biting edge of the metal ladder against his already chapped palms, the way his joints protested with every upward movement, the endless, grey expanse of the ruined city glimpsed through a shattered window on the seventh floor.

Sara pulled herself onto a landing, her movements economic, a dancer of the ruins. She looked back at him, her eyes, even in the dim glow of her lamp, reflecting a quiet determination. "Higher," she simply stated. Her voice was terse, but it held a peculiar strength, a will that bent even the relentless cold to its purpose. Jeff nodded, pushing past the growing exhaustion, the phantom taste of metal in his mouth.

They ascended, floor after floor, the silence broken only by the rasp of their heavy jackets, the occasional creak of metal, and the distant, almost imperceptible groan of the building settling. He pictured the lights Sara sought, shimmering in the oppressive dark, a defiant sparkle. Would they even work? Most pre-Collapse tech was fried, useless. But some, the more robust, simpler systems, sometimes survived the network cascade, waiting to be found, to be repurposed. Hope, even in this world, clung to the smallest possibilities.

On the fifteenth floor, a section of the exterior wall had collapsed completely, revealing a breathtaking, terrifying view of the snow-swept city. Below, the scattered pinpricks of light from other scavengers' shelters, like embers in a vast, dying hearth. Above, the bruised sky. The wind here was a physical force, pushing against them, threatening to rip them from their precarious perch. Jeff braced himself, feeling the familiar fear, the vertigo that always threatened to overwhelm him. Sara, however, seemed to absorb the gale, her silhouette stark against the grey, examining the floorplan.

"This way," she pointed, indicating a narrow, uncollapsed corridor. "Maintenance access. Might be less scavenged."

A Thread of Colour

The maintenance tunnels were a labyrinth of conduits and rusted machinery, dripping with condensation. The air here was still, humid, with the acrid scent of decaying electronics and damp concrete. They moved slower now, their senses on high alert. The low hum of something ancient, forgotten, pulsed faintly from deeper within the building. It could be residual power. It could be something far worse. Every shadow seemed to shift, every distant creak amplified.

They found it in a small, cramped storage closet, half-buried under a pile of desiccated data-slates and plastic packaging that crumbled to dust at a touch. A box. Faded, its corporate branding long unreadable, but inside, coiled carefully, were strands of multi-coloured LED lights. Not the hyper-efficient, sterile white glow of modern tech, but the warm, almost nostalgic hues of older models. Red, green, blue, yellow. He picked up a strand, the tiny bulbs cool and smooth beneath his gloved fingers. He felt a strange flutter in his chest, a sensation he hadn't experienced in years.

"Work?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper, afraid to break the fragile spell.

Sara pulled out a small, scavenged power converter from her pack, its indicator light a dull, sickly green. She carefully stripped back some insulation from the wiring of the light strand with a well-worn utility knife, her movements precise. The air thickened with anticipation. Then, a faint *click*, and a single red bulb at the end of the string flickered to life, bathing her face in a soft, unexpected crimson glow. Then another, blue. Then yellow. A small chain of colour, defying the gloom. Jeff felt a smile, foreign and unexpected, tug at the corners of his lips. It was small, almost imperceptible, but it was there.

"Good," she said, a hint of something resembling triumph in her usually flat tone. She didn't say more, but her eyes, catching the multi-coloured light, seemed to soften, to hold a spark of something almost like joy. It was a rare sight.

Beyond the lights, they found more. A small, battery-powered holographic projector, its casing cracked but still functional. A bag of synthetic snow, its texture surprisingly soft, like fine sugar. And, unexpectedly, a stunted, withered pine branch, likely from a decorative plant that had long since died but whose skeleton remained, surprisingly intact.

A Sanctuary of Shared Light

The journey back was quicker, fuelled by a strange lightness that had settled over them. The heavy pack, now filled with their treasures, felt less burdensome. They returned to their shelter, a cleverly repurposed section of an abandoned hab-unit, tucked deep within the lower levels of a dilapidated residential block. Its walls were reinforced with scavenged corrugated metal and insulated with thermal blankets, making it surprisingly defensible against both the elements and unwelcome visitors. A small, scavenged generator hummed softly in the corner, its exhaust routed through a cleverly disguised vent.

Inside, the air was still cold, but less cutting. Jeff carefully plugged the power converter into an auxiliary port on their main power cell. The lights, initially dim, flickered, then stabilised into a steady, warm glow. Red, green, blue, yellow, chasing each other in a gentle sequence. The small space, usually a tableau of stark utility, was transformed. The harsh shadows softened. The cold, raw metallic surfaces caught the reflected colours, giving them a brief, transient beauty.

Sara took the withered pine branch. Its needles, mostly gone, left behind a stark, elegant skeleton. She found a discarded industrial pot, filling it with packed snow to give the branch stability. Then, with an almost tender care, she began to drape the string of lights around its sparse frame. Jeff watched her, captivated. Her fingers, usually so quick and precise in their work of dismantling and repairing, were slow, deliberate, as if handling something sacred. He thought of his own childhood, of his father, before the collapse, untangling a mess of lights every year, grumbling good-naturedly. The scent of real pine had filled the small hab-unit then, a rich, earthy smell that spoke of living things, of forests he’d only ever seen in archived files.

This branch, this fragile skeleton, carried none of that scent. It was just wood, devoid of life. Yet, as Sara wove the lights around it, as the colours began to chase across its boughs, it began to shimmer with an undeniable, resonant life. It wasn't the vibrant, overwhelming display of his fragmented memories. It was smaller, quieter, more profound. It was a defiance, a whisper against the roar of the ruined world.

He remembered one Christmas, a particularly vivid shard of memory. He'd been very small, maybe five or six. His father had lifted him up so he could place the star, a cheap, plastic thing, atop their tree. The rough feel of his father’s coat, the scent of his synth-fabric, the dizzying height, and the pure, uncomplicated joy of that moment, of feeling important, of creating something beautiful. He didn’t know if that memory was entirely real, or if it had been embellished by the trauma of loss, but it felt true in his bones.

Sara stepped back, her work done. The lights pulsed with their gentle rhythm, casting shifting colours over her face, over the crude metal walls, over their scavenged gear. She looked at the branch, now a glowing, vibrant thing, for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she looked at Jeff. Their eyes met across the flickering space, a silent communication passing between them. There was no need for words, no need for explanation. The small, electric bloom in the corner of their shelter spoke volumes.

He walked over to a small, corroded shelf, retrieving the cracked holographic projector. It hummed to life with a faint whir, casting a wavering, ethereal image onto the wall above the branch. It wasn't a soaring angel or a benevolent Santa; it was a simple, stylised snowflake, slowly rotating, its six points catching and refracting the light from the branch. The synthetic snow, sprinkled around the base, shimmered. It was absurd. It was beautiful. And for a moment, the relentless cold of the winter, the gnawing anxiety of their daily struggle, the overwhelming sense of loss, all faded into the background, eclipsed by the simple, fragile warmth of that shared, illuminated space.

Jeff reached out, his hand hovering near the winking lights. They were cool to the touch, efficient LEDs, not the old incandescent bulbs that generated heat. Yet, a warmth, distinct and undeniable, spread through him. It was the warmth of a memory made tangible, a hope brought to life by scavenged parts and stubborn will. He glanced at Sara. She was still watching the lights, a soft, almost wistful expression on her face. The silence that stretched between them was not empty, but full, pregnant with unspoken shared memories and a quiet, profound understanding. He felt a rare lightness, a feeling he hadn't known in what felt like an eternity. A single, winking red bulb on their makeshift tree caught his eye, a steady pulse in the overwhelming gloom of the outside world, a defiant heartbeat against the silent, encroaching winter.