SİLENT SNOWMEN (English Edition)

Sia – Snowman.

One day, somewhere, in someone.

Karsu was taking steps, straining the fabric of the black suit on her body. The guardian, watching for the exact moment her foot touched the ground, held his breath, waiting for her patiently. His breath escaped every time her feet hit the ground; the sound of his breathing mingling with her footsteps. Karsu, who was now settling into a steady rhythm as she walked, never strayed from her path.

When the first drop of the seasonal transition fell to the earth, it struck hard against the place where it would nestle. The mud splashing from the spot where the drop touched the ground dispersed in a circle without scattering too far from the drop that caused it. As the city began to reveal its hidden, magical signs, it left everyone unaware of it.

The guardian was whispering, "There was once a princess. On the day she received her title of princess, as the crystal flakes of snow fell, she spun around and looked up at the sky. The first snowflakes would always touch her hair first."

"According to a Yakut legend, long ago the world was very cold," he continued. His eyes were always on Karsu.

The breeze entering the cafe had first grazed past her, then circled around her.

"Ülker—in Yakut Turkic—was a star through whose opening in the sky cold winds would enter and freeze everything on Earth."

He paused briefly. His lips, moving faster and striking against each other as if in prayer, swallowed his whisper.

"One day, a great hero emerged; so his hands wouldn't freeze, he crafted thirty pairs of gloves from wolf skin, ascended to the sky, and sealed the opening of the Ülker star..." he said.

He was watching her.

He was always watching her.

When he noticed the woman whose back he was watching reaching into her pocket and placing the rose where it belonged, the doors opened completely.

A red-and-white rose. Rosa Osiria.

...

At almost the exact same time, but in a completely different place,

The infinity symbol made of ice fragments, appearing above the head of the man who was striving with all his might to tear apart two interconnected universes, cracked.

Hearing the sound, the man stopped abruptly. The cloud of steam issuing from his mouth drifted away and etched itself onto the universe he was trying to separate. While still conscious, he heard the voice of a woman whose face he could not see. Her universe merged into his own. As all the power drained from his body, he fell to the ground.

...

When time returned to Karsu, she stood with a furrowed brow, looking at the rose that had come out of her pocket in astonishment.

"How?" she whispered.

She continued to look at the rose, rapidly turning it between her slender, delicate fingers. Her eyes were narrowed, her face contorted in a frown. Her light auburn hair, reaching her waist, caught the gently blowing wind and fluttered in front of her eyes. The tip of her upturned, triangular nose rose with a flawless slope, reaching its sharpest point. That was the sharpest feature of her face. The tip of her nose and her nostrils, where her anger could easily be read, formed a triangle when viewed from the front. She compressed her full, average-sized lips.

Even with its thorns unstripped, the rose was remarkably heavy. They were so numerous and so large... Though it looked normal, it was strange.

Was this a rose with the largest thorns, that it could become this heavy?

She was wearing an outfit consisting of a white jacket and matching trousers, completed by pointed high heels, open-toed with thin ankle straps. Pressing her heels firmly into the ground, she shifted her full weight back to stand more securely. With her brows furrowed, her anger surged further with every event she tried to make sense of.

After all, whether a little or a lot, anger was right here. It circulated rapidly through her entire body, preparing her for an end.

Those who turned toward the sound of high heels that had been echoing for a while now scanned her from top to bottom before continuing on their way.

What is called time began to flow in this manner, within its own temporality.

And so, Karsu relived the events of half an hour ago in her mind, over and over again.

...

As she spoke, such moments seemed to multiply.

"I can smell your feelings," she said.

She was speaking while looking alternately at my right eye, then my left. As the woman said this, her eyes seemed to be searching for something hidden inside me too. Or no! It was as if she herself wanted to hide something within me. Her eyes kept shifting back and forth between mine. She was practicing the first principle of effective communication with true merit. When someone entered through the door near the table where I sat, the tiny breeze that slipped inside touched my skin. At that very moment, a shudder ran through me. I shivered slightly. I pulled my shoulders inward and straightened myself up. The right moment, the right person, the right place... It was a touch so sudden and sharp that it prevented me from giving a real reaction.

For a brief moment, I watched my hair whip around. Had the fortune teller struck a deal with the universe, translating the wind entering through the door into her own language?

I responded to my own thought with a faint, subtle smile. I blinked my eyes as well.

Alright then!

"A love that hasn't had anywhere to go for a long time..." Her voice slowed down first, and then a delicate pause settled between her words.

"In every moment you think you've lived through and finished, you will continue to live."

She continued.

"And you will." Another pause.

And then, "As far as eternity and whatever comes after it..." she said.

I don't know... Were these things the mind could comprehend?

Some beginnings ought to be quite simple.

Whenever we said "let's have a cup of Turkish coffee" in this country, it always ended up here. I smiled faintly. A moment that a few people could share in, witness, form an opinion about, and convey to someone else from their own perspective—I found myself experiencing it all alone.

Wasn't this a state that everyone would feel, somewhere, someday?

"I can see what's hidden inside your eyes. You... You were born on a day that doesn't exist in the world."

The fortune teller disrupted the thoughts between myself and my inner voice with a voice louder than her usual tone. This woman sitting beside me was speaking leisurely, picking every word with care, delivering them to me.

Wouldn't one usually say, "I see it in the grounds"? What was the deal with these overly prophetic words? Especially their poetic quality...

Nazlı, my cousin. She had called this woman over to our table about ten minutes ago.

Rolling my eyes, I touched my fingers to my neck, then clasped it. I cast glances at the venue over my left shoulder. My intention was to hide my feelings, my thoughts, my state of discomfort toward this woman mixed with anxiety... From both women sitting beside me.

I had no side to me that would believe in such nonsense. Nor a side that wanted to. Until I felt like believing, it was going to stay that way. And even when I did believe, I would flee from it again simply because I didn't want to. Because humans always lived like this, with contradictions stretching across time.

It seemed as though I was running away because I didn't want this.

To elaborate on my discomfort: The month was August; the heat was more than it should be. I was sweating, suffocating, and on top of it, being subjected to a situation I didn't want at all. I shifted uncomfortably where I sat.

I hated the heat.

My eyes searched for the cafe's air conditioner for a moment. Where was it? Was it working? And where was that wind from a moment ago? Now, even if the door swung open and someone stepped inside, there was no breeze.

For the last few minutes, I had been taking deep breaths in and out. Honestly, my chest didn't want to fit inside my body...

My perception was so sensitive right now... With one hand, I touched the fabric of my stifling outfit, feeling every centimeter of it touching my skin with that contact. The more I thought about it, the more I seemed to sweat.

I swung my legs impatiently, crossed under the table, using all my body language so the woman would shut up and leave as soon as possible. I don't know why; things that normally annoyed me were bothering me two or three times more today. The woman had taken the cup in her hand, looking into it without swirling it even once, uttering meaningless sentences.

"There's a piano here with a few missing keys," she said, lowering her voice.

A piano?

Of course!

Now I was watching her face with curiosity. How many more sentences like this was she going to construct, I wondered?

She had fair skin and a confident, stylish expression. She caught me watching her suddenly. Our eyes locked instantly.

I couldn't call her an ordinary fortune teller. Her sentences were strangely classy. She was elegant in every sense. Remarkably elegant. She had ornate, perfectly placed words that I couldn't deny to myself...

The thin sleeves of the tight blouse she wore caused a light redness on her skin. Her high-waisted, loose-fitting black jeans—which didn't leave her belly exposed—were from a famous brand. When one corner of her lips turned upward, other unfamiliar feelings stirred inside me. I couldn't name them. Those feelings we cannot name, cannot place, that everyone experiences differently.

I wanted to avert my eyes, but I couldn't manage to. I had been caught. I swallowed and slowly licked my lips. I simply waited for whatever was coming next.

This heat... This woman... This situation... It was going to drive me crazy. Fine, maybe that was an exaggeration, but every word of hers was a poem that made me feel backed into a corner. Of course, this heat on top of it all didn't help. Had I gotten sunstroke or something?

I was a winter person. It felt as though the heat right now was killing only my soul!

My cousin, who always called me the "Winter Woman," was watching the fortune teller intently and with curiosity, paying no mind to me.

I was indeed like that. When the first snow fell, I would sit out in the snow for hours, defining those moments as the only times I could still breathe.

Sometimes I believed the only thing that could reach my core was the cold, never sharing this thought, this feeling of mine with anyone. I missed unknown aspects of winter, feeling exceptionally good through the strange sensations it gave me.

Now, too, I wanted to run away and hide in the cold.

The woman was looking straight into my eyes, her focus unbroken.

"Your heart is cold," she said to me.

With that short sentence leaving her mouth, my heart gave a genuine reaction. It was a matter of perception, like someone automatically turning to look upon hearing their name.

My heart was the only organ listening to her.

How?

Her address was solely to it. That lonely feeling sleeping within me stirred as if waking up. To describe it accurately for myself: I could say it stretched lazily.

"Yes," said my cousin beside me, "it's frozen solid."

In spite of those feelings, I stubbornly shrugged.

I don't care, I was saying that way!

What did the proverb say: "Don't believe in fortune-telling, but don't stay without it either." My heart, which wanted to believe right now and succeeded in doing so, waved goodbye to my foolish thoughts.

The woman was still looking at me, not remaining silent, stubbornly continuing her words. She was looking directly into my eyes, not breaking her focus for a single moment... What did she want from me, from my eyes?

Or maybe it wasn't unique to me; she was just doing her job by looking at people like this, acting like this normally.

I looked at her for a long time. I wasn't backing down either.

A fortune teller, really?

"Huh..." I made a sound involuntarily. I was talking to myself inside my head, not caring about my surroundings at all. I never believed in fortunes.

I watched her, narrowing my eyes.

I was observing. She too seemed to have decoded the expression on my face with those piercing eyes of hers, acting accordingly in response.

This time, without looking at the coffee cup even once, she spoke while studying my face.

"Your heart is cold," she repeated herself.

My heart, the addressee of her words, stirred slightly once more. Maybe it was a sensation forming in my stomach instead. The feeling of being exposed that occurs when something you never wanted known happens.

"It has frozen... It has swallowed the ice," she said.

The part of me that wanted to believe in her, in the fortune, in the prophecy, or whatever it was, was coming into existence now. But what about the part of me that found it foolish? I was in conflict with myself now.

The ice was real, and the cold was mine.

In the end, I chose to care about her only regarding this matter. A part of me wanted to hear the rest. My eyes quickly darted to Nazlı and returned to their previous focus, that woman... Was she really reading me, or was this woman just making everything up?

In this day and age, weren't we all cold anyway?

Who could warm this coldness of people? It certainly wasn't this world. Could these frozen hearts function? Could they beat? No!

Was it a metaphor? Or was it not?

It wasn't.

I took a deep breath and let it out. Alright,

While continuing to look directly into my eyes, she slightly lifted the left corner of her mouth. I shifted uncomfortably and swallowed audibly.

The energy her words, her eyes left in me continued to circulate inside me as uneasiness.

What was happening? Yes! My inside believed it, but my mind never would.

When the fortune teller's lips—accentuated with dark red lipstick—parted again, I was still watching her. Strangely, I couldn't tear my eyes away from her either.

Damn it!

But as the seconds passed, the strangeness of her gaze... And her interest in me... Was beginning to frighten me.

I wanted to avert my eyes... But I couldn't do that either.

This beautiful woman's interest... Was different. And this was taking me to a dimension beyond merely being uncomfortable. I couldn't give a name to this feeling either. What was that dimension, did anyone know? Maybe, but I was sure many felt it.

Why had she suddenly appeared before us? Her demeanor, her attitude, her words... Everything was so strange.

Her green eyes were vibrant. Her short, bobbed hair was thick-stranded and shiny. Her snow-white skin was almost surreal.

My mind was intrinsically filled with unknowns, strange thoughts, and feelings anyway. Now it was thinking those odd things again... And on top of that, experiencing them, living them, and feeling them.

It was just like the numbness felt in winter, minus the beautiful side of feeling the cold.

"The music playing in you is incomplete, but it won't stay that way forever."

I blinked. "Incomplete?" I muttered. I had spoken with a furrowed brow.

Alright, I took a deep breath in and let it out. I would silence my thoughts, not interrupt her speech in my mind at all, not ponder over her sentences, allow all of this to happen, and end the day just like this.

"Your missing piece will begin to play."

She leaned slightly toward me.

"Your eternity... Has appeared above the man's head," she whispered.

Suddenly, I turned my head the other way.

It was like a reflex. Why had I done that? It was like a tic.

Nazlı said, "Wow! There's a right man out there."

"Nazlı!" I said, my eyes widening.

Sitting beside me, she was taking this woman's side. I couldn't say we were a fantastic duo, but sometimes I felt good around her. She was always cheerful and carefree.

Sometimes it even felt strange to me that we were relatives. I had never known my mother. All I knew was that she died while giving birth to me in a high, roadless area during the harshest month of winter.

She was the most precious thing in this world that I could never reach. Even in this brief moment, my heart stumbled for a second. I had a photograph in my hands to remember her by, yes, but they had chosen to live their lives in secrecy always; so I suppose even that photograph was quite old and taken out of focus. My father, who had taken that picture of her, had left the day she died.

Narrowing my eyes, I pulled myself out of my head and looked at Nazlı. This woman had plagued us mostly because of Nazlı. A stylish fortune teller roaming around in such a nice cafe... For now, our table was the only one she had visited, but I couldn't know...

She had succeeded in disturbing me, in stirring my inner world.

"Anyway, that's enough. Let us pay you your fee, thank you," I interjected. This was the first opportunity I got to wrap this business up.

The moment I reached for the wallet in my bag, the woman suddenly grabbed my wrist.

"No. Someone else," she said, looking right into my eyes.

I froze. First this physical contact, then that sentence of hers... It was unbelievable, but my heart skipped a beat. Even as I was shocked by this, I reacted like any human being to something I couldn't comprehend, getting angry and rejecting it.

"You're going too far," I said.

Some of my organs, already split in two, had chosen their side. My heart had believed, yes, but my mind wanted to choose disbelief.

This ill-timed touch had simultaneously triumphed over my mind, triggering all my fierce defensiveness. What was she trying to do? I didn't like physical contact at all—not one bit.

Nazlı had gone quiet too.

With this move of hers, I was forced to look at the woman's green eyes from this close up. Her gaze was still full of meaning. There was something inside them that was unknown yet familiar. Something as strange as me... As cold as me... I just couldn't describe that meaning. I wanted to push her away. I could even start a fight, perhaps, but...

A face I was seeing for the very first time in my life... Was looking at me as if with longing.

No way.

Longing was an extreme feeling.

As my mind began to overflow with words again, they were all trying to find meaning, but couldn't settle into place in my head.

I furrowed my brows and never uncreased them. Her hands were very cold. As the coldness of her hands seeped into my wrist, a shudder went through me.

How dare she touch me?

I began casting evasive glances. Normally I, who always pulled myself back, right now... But... No, I was stuck where I was.

I just kept looking, having already answered her in my head, having pushed her away. But the actions in reality... I was missing them. In the end, with a forced smile, I gently pushed her hand away. I figured neither of us wanted to make a scene here. Because she was stepping way out of line.

"Alright, let's not exaggerate," I said, in an authoritative tone.

But the cold she left on my wrist... It just stayed there. It wasn't dissipating, nor was it going away...

I looked at her for a while longer. Her cold touch, which brought a sense of relief to my insides... Damn it!

Cold... Was somehow meaningful to me in an absurd way, in this current situation.

When Nazlı started talking to the woman, I suddenly stood up.

"Ma'am, please continue. Who is this man?" Nazlı had said.

I couldn't stand the voices inside me anymore. I grabbed her by the arm. I would drag her behind me if necessary.

Leaving the money on the table, I walked away from there quickly without giving the woman another glance.

Now, whether out of fear... Or anger... My heart was beating fast.

No!

It was something else.

The moment we stepped out into the cafe's garden, Nazlı pulled her arm free from my grip.

"Girl, don't believe in fortunes, okay, but don't stay without them either. You should have listened a bit more," she began to complain.

"Sure..." I said, rolling my eyes.

I kept walking.

Fortunately, in this situation, Nazlı’s chatter would drown out the voices inside my head. At least, that's what I was hoping.

"Karsu, please believe in these things just once."

"Oh, Nazlı!" I vented in frustration.

"Okay, fine, but aren't you even a little curious about that man?"

"What man? Don't be ridiculous, please."

"The woman was more like a prophet than a fortune teller, Karsu, my skin was crawling."

She was laughing.

We kept walking. We had slowed our pace, keeping our distance unchanged. She was coming along behind me.

Even though she couldn't see it, I rolled my eyes.

"You believe it then."

"Oh, I'd give anything to meet the man who will bring your arrogant self to your knees."

"Don't exaggerate!" I yelled at her.

She kept talking. As for me, a part of my inside had been triggered, and it held a place now... A place no one could silence. A place we are certain exists inside everyone...

The fact that those voices were what made a human being human frightened me too. Actually, those missing melodies in me... Were there even before this woman mentioned them.

I knew it. I felt it.

Today, everything... Had become more convoluted than ever, exhausting me even further. Was there no chance this distress of mine was just a dream?

I took a deep breath and slowly released it.

Alright then.

Today, I was going to sleep again and again for the nights in which I wouldn't dream.