Snow Sizzling in Soleil is a published novel by elementa-selection.com and available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and all e-formats. Below appear the storyline's opening paragraphs.

FEBRUARY

SNOWFLAKES FALLING FROM A WHITE SHY DRIFT INTO BRILLIANT band covering lawn and field. Forest floors and mountain peaks slumber beneath snow deep as an eiderdown quilt. Rooftops silently uphold white bunting like royal heads bearing ermine-trimmed crowns. Smoky puffs escaping hearths' inferno billow through chimneys to find swift relief in snowfall's embrace. Frozen sidewalks winding onward escort streets lying-in-state alongside wear their own shades of white. Even chevron tracks left by cars' winter tires differentiate contrasting high and low depths imprinted on roadways' snow luster leaving behind impressions resembling long sterling silver chain-link necklaces winding through the frosty-white neighborhood that is Soleil.

The horizon is probably white too, if I could only see it!

The word echoes in his cranium confine.

Horizon...ho...rizon...hor...iz...on...hor...I...z...ah...nnn

Christophe imagines how the horizon might look to his gaze now if he could only glimpse it through the crystal flakes swirling about him. His mind gives a short thought to the dictionary meaning of the word as being the line where land meets the sky and its philosophy as an understanding of one's interpretation and all that. But it is a certain truth that horizon is the defining line where hungry theatre happens; the sun is swallowed away at days' end, a sea burps sails into view above it, jet aircraft evaporate in thin air beyond, birds in flight soar through it, ships vanish over its edge, eyes peering through spyglasses spot land rising along it and the moon glides in orbit above for as long as it's able...until the sun rises.

And, well, the horizon is honest that way.

Horizon is the ultimate enigma concrete to my eye but elusive to my reach and for my memory to keep. It is the magnet luring iron-nerve navigators and astronauts from the heat of mattress and solace of sheet. Do explorers return from their chases with a piece of horizon in their hands?

"Of course not," Christophe answered his silent query aloud hearing words fall away to silence as snowflakes silently falling. "Only snacks and souvenirs gathered up along the way like hericots verts, peppers, silk cloth and gold thread for new clothes later, bits of moon rock celled in nitrogen and lunar dust-dunes sealed in tubes. Those guys stake flags in their wakes and leave footprints in ash. The they are home again somewhere pressing their noses against windowpanes, eyes looking out over lawns up roadways through valleys between hills at the horizon."

Snow protests as short squeaks under the crunching treads of Christophe's boots.

"Even the nights are white, just a quieter shade is all what with the moon's white glow and silver stars shining over Uncle's snow-banked yards." And the boy sees his words steaming from his hot lungs as sheer frosty puffs with every breath he speaks. "I'm even talking in white!" Words freeze as tiny crystal clouds floating over his head.

Then as in a silent movie playing forward in slow motion Christophe glimpsed the forms of two girls emerging on the edge of his invisible horizon. They walk side by side through swirling flakes upon the sidewalk crossing his line of vision. He watches large soft crystals fall softly on their caps and waft about their bodies.