Before It Gets Cold

Category B: First Place (2026) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: Selma Jia

Snow arrived quietly enough that nobody noticed when it stopped melting.

At first, it only silvered the edges of rooftops before dawn, thin as breath against glass. By midday, the streets would clear, leaving gutters running with cold water. Children pressed their boots into the slush outside the school gates. Shopkeepers shook snow from their coats and laughed about early winters.

Then one morning the snow remained. Not much. Just enough to soften the town. The graveyard fences lost their sharpness first. Then the traffic lights, their colours blurred behind white drifting air. Sound began travelling strangely, too. Footsteps arrived muffled, doors closed softly, as though wrapped in cloth.

Inside the bakery on Spencer Street, jars of honey appeared beside the register sometime that week. No labels. No prices. Golden light gathered inside the glass whenever snow fell. Everyone in town began buying them without discussion. My mother kept one beside the stove.

At night, she stirred spoonfuls into tea until amber ribbons disappeared beneath the surface. Steam clouded the kitchen windows. Beyond the glass, snow descended quietly through the streetlight’s glow.

“You’ll sleep,” she said once, pushing a mug toward me. I remember the honey tasting faintly of oranges. That night I dreamt of my grandmother for the first time in years. Not how she looked in the photographs mum kept hidden; hands paper thin against hospital sheets. She looked younger in the dream, though not young exactly. Stronger. Her silver hair hung loose, and sunlight caught along the curve of her cheek as she stood at the kitchen counter peeling oranges in one long, unbroken slice, exactly the way she used to.

She looked up when she heard me.

“You cut your hair,” she said. I touched my hair without thinking.

Weeks earlier, I had cut it alone in the bathroom mirror while snow climbed up the window outside. Thick strands slid silently into the sink. I remember watching them circle the drain and thinking, absurdly, that maybe grief obeyed the same rules as weight. If enough of it was removed, I might finally feel lighter. But in the dream, she still recognised me immediately. Some part of me wondered how she always seemed to be waiting. I woke before morning. Downstairs, the honey jar sat open on the counter. After that, sleep became difficult to refuse.

Snow deepened over the following weeks. People stopped brushing snow from their shoulders when entering buildings, it simply melted onto the floorboards under them. At the florist, bouquets browned in their buckets untouched. The butcher began leaving the CLOSED sign hanging well past noon. Nobody mentioned it. But at night, pale gold leaked from beneath curtains all along Spencer Street.

One morning, I woke before dawn and found my mother standing outside barefoot in the snow. She only wore her pyjamas and my father’s old coat. She stared down the road toward the woods beyond the church. Snow gathered silently along her sleeves. Her footprints stretched behind her across the untouched white lawn.

Only outward.

“Mum?”

She turned slowly, like surfacing from deep water. Then she smiled in a way that made my chest ache.

“Tired,” she murmured.

Inside, her tea had gone cold beside the sink. Honey clung thickly to the spoon. After that, I began hiding the jars. I tipped them quietly down the drain while the house slept. Thick gold slowly flowed through the sink, catching moonlight before disappearing. Guilt followed each time. Not because of the waste of honey. Because somewhere inside sleep, my grandmother still waited.

Some nights, I lie awake listening to snow brushing against the windows, trying to remember my grandmother’s laugh. By morning, it’s always blurred. Only fragments remain, her hands moving across piano keys, the shape of her shadow crossing my bedroom doorway years ago. But in dreams she arrived whole.

One evening, my mum touched the piano for the first time since the funeral. The instrument had remained closed for nearly two years, gathering dust. But now the lid stood open. Snow light spilled across the keys. Mum pressed one note. Then another. Wrong notes. Hesitant.

“I can’t remember,” she whispered.

Her fingers remained motionless above the keyboard. That night I found three unopened jars hidden inside her wardrobe. Afterwards the dreams deepened. Or worsened. I stopped knowing which.

Sometimes my grandmother and I sat beside the river for hours without speaking. Sometimes she would look at me and ask,

“Why do you always wake up so early?”

She asked gently, as she always had, but her hand tightened slightly around mine.

Before I could answer, she reached across the grass and brushed snow from my sleeve. Snow. Inside the dream. I woke with cold water soaking through my sleeve. Perhaps the snow had never asked which world it belonged to. The town had nearly disappeared by then. Snow buried fences completely. Storefronts became pale shapes beneath white drifts. Entire houses stood dark for days, chimneys unlit, paths untouched.

One night I carried every honey jar to the sink. That night, I dreamed of my grandmother once more, only for a moment. She stood at the counter and said,

“It’s getting cold.”

My mum slept upstairs. Beyond the window, snow blurred the entire world into a single sheet of white. I unscrewed the first lid.

Orange blossom.

The second smelled faintly of smoke.

The third smelled like summer grass after rain.

My hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

My mother’s voice drifted down through the dark.

“Did she still play that song wrong near the end?”

Silence.

“I can’t remember that part anymore.”

I stood there with honey coating my fingers. Outside, snow continued falling gently across the town. Softening every hard edge it touched. By morning, the sink was empty. And beside the stove sat a single unopened jar glowing gold in the early light. My mother walked into the kitchen, looked at it for a long while, then reached for the kettle instead.