Odd Prompts: The Cold and Bitter Wind cut straight through his Clothes

This week’s Odd Prompt is via Padre, who poses the issue of a cold and bitter wind. I have to assume they are at least partially acquainted with British weather!

***

Mitchell had not expected the weather to be quite as cold as it was. Oh, he knew it would not be warm, because the Scottish Highlands never got truly hot, but this? It was meant to be spring, and spring was giving way to summer soon, so how could it be that the breeze had morphed, so quickly and easily, into a howling, frigid wind?

He pressed on, across the clumps of grass, and hardy shrubbery, seeking the solace of the quaint village he had passed an hour earlier. His eyes scanned the pale grey skies for any pinpricks of blue, or sunlight punching through the cloud cover, and he despairingly sighed. Nothing foretold relief from the near-freezing, awful wind. Mitchell imagined each blustery gust as a dull knife, slamming against him, and his meagre, inappropriate clothing. Hope had been placed in a t-shirt and jeans, but now Mitchell realised the Highlands demanded more respect. The wooly sheep he had passed on his outward journey came back into view, and their thick, fluffy coats only made his misery more complete.

As Mitchell carefully navigated across the uneven landscape, doing his best not to startle the local fauna, he noticed a peculiar wound, not of his flesh, but of his t-shirt. The deep blue fabric bore the mark of a coarse, uneven slice, with freshly loosened threads dangling from the gash. His brown eyes widened in worry; he had heard the Scottish wind could cut like a knife, but he had never heard of any bluster literally shredding garments. Concern flooded his veins as a second, freezing strike sliced clean through his jeans, at his right thigh, though again his skin remained untouched.

“This can’t be happening!” he grumbled to himself, moving more quickly, and startling the previously languid sheep. They brayed, irritated at the disturbance, but Mitchell raced on by, toward the crumbled remnants of an old cobbled wall, lining a small, puddle-ridden road. A new cut, this time lower and wider, ripped a hole in his jeans, right across his rump, and he yelped. A fourth cold breeze clipped his shoulder, revealing pale skin. Mitchell ran, sprinting down the road toward safe harbour, but the cold wind’s blades multiplied, shredding his shirt and his jeans with abandon. Pieces of his moderately expensive clothes trailed him down the path, and then Mitchell’s greatest fear was realised.

A car came trundling up the road, and the driver, Mrs Beavis, of the nearest village, was a prim, proper lady, who conducted herself in a vigorously dignified manner. The sight of a man reduced to nothing but his baggy boxer shorts, shivering from the bitterly cold wind, produced an exquisite gasp as she drove by. Mitchell, by now frozen to the bone, could offer her nothing but a sheepish wave, and he renewed his sprint for anything that vaguely resembled dignity of his own.

He would never again doubt the old adage about a cutting wind.

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