Ice Storm!

THE ICE STORM 2025

The ice storm arrived without drama, which was its first betrayal.

It came as a whisper instead of a shout, a thinning of the air that made the breath feel heavier in the lungs. 

The radio said freezing rain advisory, the way radios always said dangerous things politely, like they were asking permission. 
By the time dusk slid over the valley, the whisper had become a patient, persistent tapping on every surface—branch, wire, roof, bone.

Evan Mercer stood at the kitchen window and watched the world varnish itself.
At first, it looked beautiful. 
It always did. 
The maple tree in the yard wore a skin of glass, every twig outlined in light from the porch lamp. 
Power lines sagged under their invisible burden, humming low like tired cello strings. 
The road shone black and slick, a mirror that reflected the orange sky back at itself.
“Dad?” Lily said behind him.

He turned. 

His daughter stood in the hallway, wrapped in her winter coat even though they were inside. 
She had inherited her mother’s habit of preparing for disaster early, thoroughly, emotionally. 
The hood framed her face like parentheses.
“Is it bad?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Evan said. “But it might get there.”
She nodded, absorbing that with the seriousness of someone who understood might better than most adults. 

Lily had been ten when her mother died in a car accident during a snowstorm—another polite warning ignored, another road that looked fine until it wasn’t. 
Since then, weather had stopped being background noise in their lives. 
It had become a character, unpredictable and dangerous and personal.

The first transformer blew an hour later.

The lights flickered once, twice, and then the house exhaled into darkness. 
The refrigerator stopped its low companionable hum. 
The clock on the microwave went blank. 

Silence rushed in, thick and sudden.

Evan swore softly and reached for the flashlight he kept on the counter. 
Lily was already lighting a candle.
“Good reflexes,” he said.
She shrugged. “Mrs. Halloway made us practice in school. Emergency drills.”
“Mrs. Halloway is a saint.”
“Mrs. Halloway is terrified of weather,” Lily corrected.

Outside, the tapping had become a steady hiss. 
Ice coated the windows in creeping veins, spreading like a living thing. 
Somewhere down the road, a branch cracked, the sound sharp as a gunshot.

They ate dinner cold that night, soup straight from the can, sitting close together at the table. 

Evan told Lily stories by candlelight—the kind without storms in them, the kind where things worked out neatly. 
He could tell she was pretending not to listen, pretending to be braver than she felt, and that made him both proud and afraid.

By midnight, the temperature dropped another five degrees.

The ice thickened. 

Trees bowed under its weight. 
The world grew smaller, quieter, held breathless under a layer of glass. 
Evan lay awake on the couch, listening to the house creak and complain. 
Every sound felt amplified, every pop of contracting wood a warning.

At 2:17 a.m., something massive broke.

The sound came from the yard, a long, groaning snap followed by a crash that shook the floor. 
Evan was on his feet instantly, heart slamming against his ribs. Lily appeared in the doorway, eyes wide.
“The maple,” she whispered.
Evan grabbed his boots and coat. “Stay inside.”
“I want to see.”
“I know. But no.”

She hesitated, then nodded, retreating into the hall. 

Evan stepped out into the storm.
The air hit him like a slap. 
Freezing rain stung his face, each drop a tiny needle. 
The beam of his flashlight cut through the darkness and landed on the maple tree—or what was left of it. 
One of the main limbs had split under the weight of the ice and fallen across the yard, narrowly missing the house. 
It lay there like a fallen giant, branches shattered, bark slick and shining.

Evan stood there longer than he should have, letting the cold seep into his bones. 
He felt something else too, something heavier than fear. 
Grief, maybe. 
The maple had been there longer than he had, longer than the house. 
His wife had hung bird feeders from it. 
Lily had learned to climb its lower branches before Evan learned to stop worrying every second she was out of sight.

Now it was broken, and there was no fixing that.

The storm didn’t care.

By morning, the world was unrecognizable.
Ice encased everything in a thick, unbroken shell. 
Fences disappeared under it. 
Cars looked dipped in resin. 
Even footprints froze in place, immortalized mid-step. 
The sky hung low and gray, pressing down on the land.

The power stayed out.

Cell service was spotty at best. Evan managed to get a text through to his sister in town—We’re okay. No power. How are you?—but nothing came back. The roads were impassable, a slick maze of fallen branches and downed lines. They were alone, not in a dramatic sense, but in the practical, unnerving way that meant no quick help, no easy escape.
Lily took it better than Evan expected.
She helped gather firewood from the shed, her breath puffing white in the cold air. She played cards by candlelight. She asked smart questions about generators and insulation and why ice made trees break instead of bend.
“Because it doesn’t give,” Evan said, stacking logs in the fireplace. “Ice doesn’t flex. It just adds weight until something else fails.”
She thought about that. “Like people?”
Evan paused, a log halfway to the grate.
“Sometimes,” he said carefully.
That afternoon, they heard a knock.
It was faint at first, almost lost under the hiss of the storm. Evan froze, listening. There it was again—three sharp raps on the front door.
He exchanged a look with Lily, then moved toward the sound, heart pounding for a new reason now. He cracked the door open.
Mrs. Halloway stood on the porch, wrapped in so many layers she looked twice her size. Ice clung to her eyelashes. Her cheeks were red, her hands shaking.
“My heat’s gone,” she said without preamble. “And my pipes are making noises I don’t like.”
“Come in,” Evan said immediately.
She shuffled inside, relief collapsing her shoulders. Lily took her coat and set her in front of the fire. Mrs. Halloway’s eyes roamed the room, taking in the candles, the calm.
“You’re prepared,” she said.
Evan smiled thinly. “Experience.”
By nightfall, two more neighbors arrived. Then another. Word spread the old-fashioned way, by footsteps and knocking and the shared understanding that warmth mattered more than pride. Evan’s living room filled with people and dogs and the low murmur of voices. Someone brought a pot of chili. Someone else brought a radio that crackled with updates.
Widespread outages.
Crews overwhelmed.
Days, not hours.
The ice storm tightened its grip.
That night, Evan dreamed of glass.
He dreamed he was walking through a forest where every tree was made of crystal, their branches chiming softly as they swayed. He reached out to touch one, and it shattered in his hand, shards slicing his skin. He woke with a gasp, the sound of breaking wood echoing somewhere in the distance.
In the morning, the storm eased.
The rain stopped. The temperature held. The ice remained.
Sunlight broke through the clouds and turned the world into a cathedral of light. Everything sparkled. Every movement sent cascades of glitter raining down. It was heartbreakingly beautiful, the kind of beauty that demanded a cost.
They ventured outside carefully, crunching over frozen ground. The damage revealed itself slowly. Trees snapped like matchsticks. Power poles leaned at impossible angles. A neighbor’s barn had collapsed under the weight of ice, the roof folded in on itself.
Lily stood beside Evan, silent.
“Will it all grow back?” she asked finally.
“Yes,” he said. “Most of it.”
“What about the maple?”
He looked at the broken limb, at the raw pale wood exposed to the cold. “That one… maybe not the same way.”
She nodded, accepting that.
By the third day, the cold crept into everything. Food spoiled. Tempers frayed. The novelty of candlelight wore thin. Evan worried constantly—about Lily’s fingers turning numb, about Mrs. Halloway’s cough, about the sound the house made at night when the wind shifted.
Then, just after sunset, the lights came back on.
It happened quietly, without fanfare. A hum, a flicker, a rush of sound and warmth. People cheered. Someone cried. Lily laughed, a bright, surprised sound that filled the room.
Evan leaned against the wall, suddenly exhausted.
The storm had taken things. It always did. Trees, power, the illusion of control. But it had also given something back, in its brutal way. A reminder of how thin the walls were between people, how quickly isolation could turn into community when the temperature dropped low enough.
That night, after everyone went home, Evan stood at the window again.
The ice was already melting, dripping steadily from branches and eaves. The world softened by degrees, the glass skin cracking and slipping away. The storm was ending.
But he knew better now than to think it was ever really gone.
Preview of the Next Story Part
When the thaw reveals something buried beneath the fallen maple—a relic from decades past that shouldn’t exist—Evan and Lily are drawn into a mystery the ice storm tried to hide. What they uncover will tie the land’s history to their own lives, and the next storm won’t come from the sky.