City of Ice

Snow fell in thick blankets across the cold, barren landscape in which I trudge. The watery light of the day had long ago slipped out of sight, and inky darkness once again reigns supreme over this bleak city of ice. Spring is late again – as always. There’s nothing we can do but grit our teeth and bear it; after all, mere people are helpless in the face of nature’s cruel whims.

A mournful cry pricks the cold silence — the pained, malnourished cry of a starving child that had in recent times become more frequent than the national anthem. Frozen, waste-contaminated slush had gradually seeped into the ground over the course of the long winter, blackening unripe crops across the plains and forcing the population to turn to more extreme methods of mitigating their hunger.

I pause in front of a leafless tree, the harsh white light of the moon rendering its branches eerily similar to the clean-picked bones of a human skeleton. Slowly, with trembling fingers, I peel off a strip of bark. The dull, persistent ache in the depths of my stomach screams at me to hurry, to put it in my mouth, to swallow and digest and reach for more, or else it would all be gone, destroyed like everything else; it would be gone, and I will never eat again, for the next time I try I will be far too weak to do anything but watch despairingly as my life slips away. 

It screams, and yet I find that I am able to do nothing but stare at the bark in my hands and wonder vaguely at the fact that it looks like the pelt of white tigers from centuries past.

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—

The grass is green. It seems almost comical how excited we are by that simple fact. The grass is green, and we are alive; Spring has at last heard the pleas of her desperate worshippers. The grass is green and not a block of frozen soil, the sun is a bejewelled goddess in her full exuberant glory, the sky is a lovely shade of cornflower blue dappled with clusters of fluffy clouds, and everything is so breathtakingly beautiful it feels almost too good to be true, as fleeting as a mirage. But it is true, and that makes it all the better. 

Maybe our kind in other parts of the world, places with emerald-decorated trees all year round, would take all this for granted. How I envy them, and yet— and yet, isn’t it such a curious thing, how by experiencing a season of nightmares and freezing death would make the arrival of spring all the more stunning in its juxtaposition? Isn’t it such a peculiar, strange, extraordinary thing?

Looking back now, it’s a miracle that anyone lived. It seems to be one of the core foundations of human nature: the ability to survive despite all odds. To survive, and to adapt, in the endless seeking of a brighter future. Perhaps that future may never be reached — may not even exist — but we will continue living, surviving, adapting, for the chance of one.

A sudden gust sweeps over the meadow. Children, still thin and pale from the harrowing winter but holding a re-found vigor, tumble amongst swaying fields of daisies, their laughter bubbling brilliantly, and in that moment it was the sweetest sound in the world.

I would go through everything again to hear that sound, to bottle it up and keep it close to my heart. Year after year, winter after winter, generation after generation.

Because in that moment, with the cold fresh behind us and the promise of spring ahead, nothing else mattered.

Writer – Romi Feng
Editor – Robbie Ge
Artist – Linh Nguyen Dao Gia

–May 2026–