“I just wanted to feel the snow on my fur, see it glittering in the moonlight like so many glittering jewels. I wanted to feel the cold in my lungs and the kiss of winter on my nose. I wanted to build men from snow, to carve the shape of angels in a frozen canvas and glide across crystallised lakes. Just once I wanted to forget the pain and pretend nothing ever hurt. I wasn’t trying to run from hell; I just wanted a taste of heaven. I... I think I can feel the real angels taking me away. Please I don’t want to die yet.”
XXXXXX

Powder looked out the window of the room he was meant to be checking for rats, green eyes wide as he watched the beautiful flakes of snow falling to add to the blanket of white that had been ever present since he first arrived at the asylum. How he wanted to go out and play in the snow, he’d always wanted to, since he was little and first saw the pure powder falling to coat the earth in a white blanket through a heavily barred window. But he was never allowed out of whatever house he was imprisoned in, out of fears he would run away despite the ingrained fear of pain and the fact he had been microchipped with a GPS tracker embedded deeply into his wrist when he was a baby, growing muscles and blood vessels having surrounded the chip that now if he didn’t bleed out from an attempted removal he would definitely lose the use of his hand.

He jumped when he heard the sudden blaring of the alarm, which basically was an announcement that someone had tried to escape, and Powder smiled. With his ears pressed back, mostly to protect against the loud noise, the short ferret-boy edged his way out of the room, looking every which way for any of the staff members that had been told that even if he was a patient he wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital, until he reached the main entrance, which was surprisingly unguarded, though to be fair the usual guards were no doubt trying to find whoever was causing the alarm. Smiling even wider, the little mustelidae slipped through the door and ran into the snow that surrounded the asylum.

For hours Powder played in the snow, making snow angels and snowmen, attempting to catch snowflakes on his tongue, he even tried to skate on a little river that ran by the asylum, even though he had no traction and soon fell on his butt, probably causing quite a few bruises to form under his thick fur. He was just running to the tree line, planning on touching one of the glimmering icicles that hung from the branches, it was just so shiny and he wanted to show it to his friends within the asylum, when his ears caught a loud cracking noise, almost like thunder but wrong somehow, and a burning sensation in his chest. When he looked down, his sweater was stained with red.

He felt woozy, dizzy like that one time his punisher cut too deep and he almost died, and it was hard to breathe. God, why couldn’t he breathe? He whimpered as he fell to his knees, quickly dimming mind noting the snow around his body was turning a bright red and that he could hear panicked voices screaming out to him, the words sounding far away and he couldn’t even decipher who they belonged to, yet alone what the hell they were saying.

All too soon Powder was laying on his back in the snow, the cold sting of melting water making his chest burn all the worse and his breaths coming out strained. His sight was beginning to blur and dim and tears pooled in the corner of his eyes. He was dying, he knew it, they had killed him for breaking the one rule he was given when allowed freedom enough to wader the halls of his master’s hospital. He wanted to say he was sorry, that he’d just wanted to play in the snow and he’d make it all better if he was just allowed to keep living.

As he took his last breath, the voices finally reached him and they knew it was too late. It was evident from the dark red snow the tiny male had already bled out.

(not sure if this needs mature)