Horoscopes: As The Cold Settles In

Aries:
The cold will be relentless. It will suck the warmth from everything, until no house or building can keep it out, no fire can keep you warm, no clothing can keep you from shivering. Our leaders tell us we must wait it out, even as their teeth chatter helplessly. And now night falls, taking with it even that faint and distant thing that used to be our sun...

Taurus:
There are things in the snow. You can hear them all around you: scurrying, burrowing, closing in. Keep moving. Do not stop. Warmth and shelter are your only chance of escape... if you can find them.

Gemini:
The snow is a beautiful white blanket across the ground, a sparking presence that seems designed to lure you out. Don't go. Don't let it touch you. Don't let it soak in and become part of you. Don't let it make you part of it.

Cancer:
It's all one in the end, isn't it? The cold, the silence, the darkness. It's all the inevitable triumph of entropy, energy bleeding away as the world winds down like a clock in need of winding. We make lights, spark fires for heat, shout at the top of our lungs. But how long can we keep it up?

Leo:
You think it's just a dream, that endless frozen hellscape where you find yourself every night. You think those towering things that stride through it, shaking the ground with their steps, are nightmares. Maybe you're right. Maybe you'll wake up in your bed, shivering from a cast-off blanket. Or maybe you're already awake, and trapped here.

Virgo:
Let it come. Let the ash spread across the skies, let the world turn cold again. Let the famines begin, and the riots, and the chaos. But let the great ice sheets rebuild themselves, let them grow strong enough, heavy enough, to hold back the things that are far, far worse.

Libra:
They come with the snow, drifting soft as breezes through the chill, taking whom they choose. Do not venture out, child. Those who are taken are never seen again, save perhaps as statues of ice that will melt away completely with the coming of spring.

Scorpio:
Snow to hide your presence, ice to make the path treacherous, the frozen river to carry the body away... but none of them are as cold as that length of iron in your hand, are they? None of them are as cold as your heart.

Sagittarius:
Watch carefully. They're quick, are the Frozen Folk. They move like the wind, and never break the surface of the snow. So white and sparkling, they look like part of the snow itself. Give them half a chance, and they'll pull you into a drift and hold you there, stealing the heat from your body. The doctors will call it hypothermia, frostbite, accidental death. But it isn't. It's them.

Capricorn:
Can you hear them? Can you hear their cries, so far overhead, just beneath the clouds? Stay still. Stay beneath the trees. The great raptors of the winter storms will steal you away in a breath and swallow you whole. Best to wait until they've passed.

Aquarius:
It could be anyone. With the winter coat, the scarf, the hat, the gloves, it looks like anyone. Maybe it will look helpless and desperate. Maybe it will seem friendly, speak cold and empty words of friendship. Watch the left hand. That's where it holds the knife, the knife with the blade of ice.

Pisces:
Look, I know this comes as a shock, but you're not actually who you think you are. All that talking and singing and dancing? All that light and life and joy? It's not you. It's the hat. Take the hat off, and you're nothing but a lifeless pile of snow.