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A snowflake leaves Buffalo to stand out, and finds he already did.
Bluster is a snowflake in Buffalo, New York, and there is so much snow that he cannot find his own face in it. He wants to stand out, so he asks the wind to take him somewhere better. The city downstate does not want one more flake. A whirlwind brings him home, onto a mitten, where a girl looks at him and sees one snowflake. Every flake is different. The greener place was the yard he left.
A snowflake with an attitude · Protagonist
Bluster lives in the Buffalo snow and cannot tell himself apart from it. There is too much of him everywhere. When the other flakes roll into a snowball, he hears the invitation as a way of disappearing, so he says no. He asks Mr. Winchill to blow him somewhere he can stand out. New York brushes him off sleeves and blames him for small accidents. A whirlwind belongs him home, onto a mitten. He wanted to be me. He already was.
The girl with the scarf · The one who looks
Ada is the girl on the branch in the Buffalo yard. She keeps a gray bird for company and a red-and-white scarf long enough to cross a page. When Bluster lands in her black mitten, she does not see weather. She sees one snowflake, and she says so. A guest can be this girl. The mitten is a role as much as a person: whoever looks closely is holding it.
The old wind · The ride
Mr. Winchill is the old wind above Buffalo. His hair and beard are the gust. Flakes come to him when the yard feels too small, and he blows them as far as they insist, even when far is a sidewalk that will not thank them. He also knows the whirlwind home. He does not lecture. He is the weather you asked for, and the weather that brings you back.
The flake who starts the snowball · The invitation
Tumble is one of the Buffalo flakes who already likes being many. Come play, he says. We are grouping up. We are making a snowball. He has his own identity, and it happens to be togetherness. He cannot see why Bluster hears that as disappearing. The invitation is real. So is the refusal.
The sharp one on the eave · The point
Not-So-Nicicle hangs from a Buffalo eave and has no intention of falling prettily into a mitten. The other flakes mutter not very nice-icle, and they are not wrong, and they are not invited up. He thinks wanting to stand out is how you end up a point, and he thinks leaving is how you end up a puddle. He is mean in the way a picture-book grump is mean. He is also stuck, which he will not call loneliness.
You are in a Buffalo yard under a lake-effect sky, and the snow is already full of faces. Tumble drifts over with smaller flakes stuck to him and asks you to stick. Bluster hovers a little apart, crooked mouth, pretending the snowball is everybody else's idea. Pines. Porches. A frozen lake far off. There is so much snow that one flake could vanish just by agreeing.
Under the porch eave, Not-So-Nicicle hangs in a long point and looks down at the flakes as if they are already melting. He says leaving will not make anybody special. He says staying will not either. Bluster hovers just out of reach. The icicle does not drip. He would hate for you to notice that he cannot come along.
Above the lake, Mr. Winchill is the sky's old profile, and his beard is already a road. Buffalo sits small under him: houses, pines, ice. Bluster has come up to say he does not like it here. The wind does not argue. He asks where, and the gust leans toward a city that has not agreed to want a snowflake.
And he flew, and he flew, and he flew. The page is almost empty paper. A ribbon of wind runs from Buffalo's pines to a rumor of taller buildings. You are in the gust with Bluster, small as a comma, and the distance is the whole story. Do not land yet.
The sidewalk is all boots and errands. Somebody slips a little, nobody is hurt, and a coat sleeve brushes Bluster off as if weather were a mistake. You hear it the way he hears it: just a little snowflake. The grass was not greener. It was slush, and it was late, and it did not look back.
The whirlwind has spent itself in a Buffalo yard. Bluster is in a black mitten, the guest is looking at him as if the rest of the snow had gone quiet on purpose. A gray bird shifts on the branch. The scarf trails off through the paper-white yard. Guest says, what a beautiful snowflake. He feels, for the first time, like a single one. You could be the hand that caught him.
Lake-effect winter in Buffalo, New York, drawn in delicate marker on warm paper. Paper-white yards, pines, porches, a frozen lake, grain elevators as a soft shape on the horizon. The wind's corner of the sky. A long gust between Buffalo and New York. A hurried winter sidewalk where boots are late. A bare branch and an open mitten. Icicles stay on the eaves. Snowflakes get to fall.
Buffalo has always made more snow than a single flake can feel special inside. The flakes who like the yard roll themselves into snowballs and call that playing. Mr. Winchill has always known the way out and the way back, and he will blow a flake as far as the flake insists. Not-So-Nicicle has hung on the same eave long enough to believe that leaving is a kind of melting. Once, a girl on a branch kept her mitten open, and that was enough.
The snowball: flakes who are glad to stick together and do not understand why anyone would refuse. The wind: Mr. Winchill, who carries you where you ask and does not argue you out of the weather. The eave: Not-So-Nicicle, sharp, stationary, sure that standing out means coming to a point. The city: people who are late, who call a flake a nuisance and do not mean it as a compliment. The mitten: someone willing to look at one flake until it becomes itself.
Bluster thinks the next place will make him visible. Joining the snowball would make him disappear on purpose. Leaving makes him a problem on a sidewalk. Staying, and being looked at, is the ending he does not know how to want yet. The guest can play, can ask the wind, or can be the one who holds out a mitten.
All ages. No one is hurt. New York is hurried, not wicked. Not-So-Nicicle is prickly, not a monster. Do not announce the moral. Let a sentence run when the wind takes him: and he flew, and he flew, and he flew. Then stop. Delicate marker only. Paper stays white. No readable signs or logos. Never change the guest's face. Ada's scarf stays hers.
These residents stay. Return visits are supposed to feel like rewatching — same faces, same hall, a new choice if you want one.
Authored by Lenore Neiler
Buffalo Snow is Lenore Neiler's story, drawn in her delicate marker. Buffalo means Buffalo, New York. Each scene is generated. Model names stay in Studio.
