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I love the snow. There is something about any new face of the forest that brings it a new spring joy, something unexpected and wild. The snow, I love for its strangeness: the tender fragility of the snowflakes, looking so soft and so brittle all at once, each little crystal reminds me of a heart. They're born, they fall a little while, and they melt. And somehow, in the dance of their fall, it isn't sad but wonderous. That in itself, beyond the beautiful lilac color of the lake or the light fog that spreads out across the horizon, turning the world around you into a white bubble, is an amazing part of snow.
I awoke, and ran into the fawn Aleit who I had seen the other day with Virgil. We immediately set to playing by the shores of the lake, Aleit bouncing around, our laughter filling the crisp air in bright mists. Something about the light and energetic movements of him put me in the mind of a kaleidoscope of butterflies, fluttering giddily around their flowers, without a care in the world. Aleit's exuberance reminded me of my own as a fawn, and the bright waters of the lake lured me into trying to teach him one of my favorite tricks, one that many fawns don't seem to know anymore: water-walking. He was a quick study, and soon the two of us were leaping out over the flower-colored waters. Not without mishap: but that is, I suppose, the fate of snowflakes. The water I fell into was brisk, but not too cold; so close to the earth, it retained warmth enough to keep the freeze off of its glistening surface.
Aleit and I set off right away to getting my set back. On the last stage, we began to be joined by others: Quamar, Fay, and Nightshade. The hardest, final part was the pelt, where we cycled though nearly half-a-dozen sleeping deer, as they all either vanished or, in Quamar's case, awoke. Eventually, though, we got it back.
