It Was Different.

She grabbed her coat and he threw on his boots and they were out the door. Stomping through snow and sloshing through puddles. She raised her eyes and searched for the stars. She didn't find any. Oh, why did she feel so different tonight? But then, tonight was a different night. It wasn't last Thursday, or the Thursday a couple weeks before that, when the snow drifted down so happily and she pulled her soft extra coat tighter around her for warmth and when they threw snowballs and climbed snow piles and... Tonight wasn't those nights, tonight was now. And the darkness was just a little too dark, and the snow was just a little too white, and the cold was just a little too cold as she rubbed her bare hands together silently.
They marched boldly forward and the wind blew against them harshly. It sent her hair in tumults around her head, and her scarf waving like a signal flag but really just untying those knots and bundles of warmth she had so carefully done up. He lagged behind as they went through the more narrow paths between the snow, and he rushed ahead in the open areas of wet pavement, but never moving very far from her. She thought of the dreams and happy conversations they had let this pathway share so many nights before, she thought of them, but she didn't dream this time, she didn't smile. Somehow that was all foreign tonight. She hadn't been so starry eyed lately, but then she thought, maybe that was a good thing.
Now they trudged beside each other in time, like soldiers. "It seems so lonely out here, and scary." she shivered, "The world is a dark place suddenly. So dark..." he looked down at their feet. The road and sky and tree branches all told the same story, a brilliant darkness. "Maybe this is where hopes are forsaken and day dreaming eyes loose their sparkle.." She mused. But still, she couldn't help feeling a dramatic thrill as the bitter wind framed her face with her wisping hair and she watched their lonely shadows on the pavement running, running.