Ralph and the Pixie

They ate a cold breakfast from their packs, standing together, watching the weather in silence. At last, stumbling upon some unknown and hidden stores of inner resolve, Mraan following the example set by his father and shouldered his pack as they set out once more.

The weather was getting colder, and there were bits of ice in the rain which fell. As they shouldered their way through stands of tall, mist shrouded brambles that caught at their clothes and whipped their faces, Mraan forgot his discomfort to watch the tiny balls of ice bounce as they hit the ground. He had never seen such a thing before.

After a few hours of this, the rain turned to wet snow. Mraan knew that he should be miserable, with his clammy feet and damp clothes, but the wonder of seeing the weather doing strange new things, seeing his breath in the air, and watching the landscape change before his eyes, deeply touched his sense of wonder, of discovery.

‘What do you call this?’ he asked his father, who smiled, noticing the change in his son’s demeanour.

‘Snow,’ Haloch replied. ‘This is what the wide world outside the Elf Kingdom is like right now. It must be winter.’

Mraan had heard of winter, in stories he thought of as very old. But this didn’t feel or seem as harsh or bleak as the old stories told. He smiled, feeling a resurgence of his flagging confidence. The old stories always spoke of endless gnawing hunger, of haunting loneliness and bleak despair, of close and intimate death and constant looming danger. Usually there were . . . he paused to listen.