The door squealed open and flooded the ice choked parking lot with feverish yellow light. For a moment the wind chilled it's restless pace before it blustered up another flurry of flakes from the steep sloped roof only to toss them whirling in a dervish dance across the frozen ground, like bodies scattered in a war.

The man in the doorway stared out into the darkness beyond his shadow on the snow.

Above the snow clogged scene the night bird perched in the crook of a limb of a dead tree. High above, smothered by a cloak of clouds, the moon struggled to remain alive in the last hour before sunrise.

Two strangers in the darkness, waited for dawn.