Driving

The road looked different.
She hadn't actually expected to make it out of the driveway, but the minivan easily turned with the road instead of sliding into the trees, as she had expected. She didn't know what she would have done if that had happened. She couldn't even think about the consequenses of that one. She wouldn't have been hurt, no. It was a driveway. But if the car had been damaged, if she had been unable to get out, and if she had had to explain how her car came to be here, in this particular driveway, at this particular time of day... well, she wouldn't have been able to do it. So when she pulled out into the road, she was distracted. She could feel her fingers tingling and her heart thumping and thoughts flooding her brain. "I almost lost everything," she thought. And of course she was right. It was too risky. It would have to stop. She couldn't come here anymore. It would just be that simple. Jared would understand when she didn't call him. She would start shopping at the Shaws instead of the FoodMart. He might never run into her by accident.
She wasn't sure, at first, if the road looked different because of her new outlook on life or because of the snow. Everything always looked different in the snow, but she had seen snow before. She had seen this road in snow before. It wasn't until a tree branch hit her winshield that she realized it was the ice.
It was a pine tree, one with the long, soft needles. She expected a soft brushing noise, but instead the branch hit with a sharp THUD and the winshield cracked. "My God!" she cried out. She slowed even more, glancing at the clock. She was going to be late picking up her kids. "Well, I probably won't be the only one," she thought. The road wasn't too bad, but broken branches lay in the road.
She kept having to avoid them - they were big branches. Around each one was what looked like broken glass. At first she thought some other poor driver had had their winsheild really smashed, then she saw it was ice. Ice. Ice coated each branch, each pine needle, each remaining leaf. That's why the branches were so low - the weight of it all. That's why her car winsheild had broken. The weight of the branch...
It did look beautiful though.
Leave it to nature to make the beautiful so deadly. Wind, water, ice, snow... all so pretty. All so seemingly innocent. But you wouldn't want to be stuck in it. She glanced over and was able to see that each blade of grass in a yard was covered with it's own ice armor. In the bushes, each leaf was coated in ice. She would be able to take off the ice, and have perfect ice leaves in the palm of her hand.
That's what she was noticing when her car tire hit the branch in the road. She braked, but the car kept going, swerving diagonally. She heard the soft whump of the tires hitting the snow on the side of the road, and closed her eyes as the minivan fell down an incline, into a pile of rocks.
Less than two minutes later another car passed. The couple in the car noticed the branch and avoided it. They also noticed the freshly broken trees, but didn't see a car or any lingering evidence of a crash. They assumed, without thinking of it, that the accident had been a small one, and that no people had been seriously harmed.
That night the temperature dropped below zero and stayed there for three days. Before the cold snap was over, posters covered the town and those surrounding asking for information on her wherabouts.