Christmas Moon

by Igor Zenin

A single red ornament hangs oversized from a frost-crusted branch, dwarfing an entire monochrome forest of snow-laden pines beneath it, a pale moon glowing faintly through the haze. Color shows up in exactly one place in this frame, and it's not the moon or the snow — it's the one bulb doing all the work Christmas usually needs a whole tree for. Scale gets bent just enough to make an ordinary ornament feel like it's presiding over the whole winter.