Story #4

Flurry

The little girl lay quietly in her bed, lonely fending off the sickness deep in her chest. She hadn’t been very well liked at school, the children tended to call her a weirdo for being so quiet, content with her books and her stories. But she had been in bed for a month now and would have enjoyed even their hurtful presence, at least she wouldn’t be so alone. 

She could hear the muffled voices of her parent’s arguing downstairs. Her diary lay open by her hand with one sentence written on the fresh page, clearly voicing the heartache she felt regarding her parents. “I had no idea the dissent would be so rapid between mommy and daddy once I got sick… I just want to get better, because then they would be happy again.” 

She turned her head away, through the window, she found some comfort for her loneliness. Outside the snow was swirling like a flurry of magic sparkles, reminding her that winter had begun and Christmas was around the corner. Then she thought she heard laughter. It was a high, breezy laughter. It could belong to a man or a boy. But the wind snatched it away before it reached its peak and was lost to her ears. Like a spirit or faery laugh. 

It was late out, what mother would let her children play out in the snow at this hour?

Intrigued, the little girl stood and began to make her way toward the window, slowly and achingly. She crawled up onto the windowsill and pressed her nose to the glass, searching. 

A breath of wonder escaped her lips when she spotted him. The boy frolicking in the snow outside her window looked like a spirit. His hair was white and his eyes blue as ice. His feet were bare. Wasn’t he cold?

Then he sprung into the air and she gasped. He could fly! Was he a faery or a winter sprite? She laughed in delight, her loneliness forgotten for a moment as he danced upon the telephone wires, leaving a trail of ice in his wake. He was like a character from her books, but he was real!

Suddenly, he flew off, leaving the sick little girl behind with his winter wonderland. She watched him leave sadly, wishing that he would stay. But then she turned as if called by name, her eyes landing on her desk and the stationary there… Sitting down, ink began to spill from her pen, weaving words into a poem-like story about a white haired boy with a faery laugh.

It was filled with all the spelling mistakes and grammar errors of a fourth grader, yet her pen continued at an almost feverish rate. But who was that boy? The faery boy?

“You’re out of bed?”

Startled, she turned to see her father with a steaming mug in his hands. 

“Yes… I’m writing.” 

“That’s great, honey.” He looked so tired as he set the mug down on the desk beside her. “Here, something to keep you warm. We don’t want Jack Frost nipping at your nose!”

Her brow crinkled. “Jack Frost?”

He smiled gently. “The spirit of winter.”

She turned back to the window and the white flurry outside.

Then, with a boyish laugh echoing in her ears, she wrote at the top of the page: Jack Frost. As her pen crossed the final t, a smile touched her lips as some of the lonely ache left her chest. Because, now that it was winter, Jack Frost would return, and she wouldn’t be quite so alone after all.

Fin...