SNOWDROP by Moon Shadow Magic
The season dragged on, cold and grim. Even inside the doubled walls of the town and the Academy, the wind hammered its way through wood and stone, clothing and skin, until every bone ached and every denizen yearned for the sun to tear the gray clouds apart.
There had been snow. At first, of course, it had been fun: pristine and fluffy for snow- angels, or clumping into snowballs and snowmen. But then the cold had followed and never gone away. Gradually the snow shrank, until what was left was as dirty and gray as the lowering clouds, unyielding and gritty and icy.
Ducks and geese and swans and robins, wild harbingers of a change in season, stayed away. Clock and calendar seemed suspended in the ice, and the sun seemed never to vary its course.
Most of the students were aware of the malaise settling in. Cabin fever, of course. They fought back with chairs moved closer to heating stoves, with hot drinks and toast and popcorn, with light and laughter and company.
Freya was glad that her circle of friends was quiet and studious. Pleasant times they had, to be sure, but without the raucous hooting of the Beginners on the top floor. This winter seemed to be hitting her especially hard; she'd taken to going early to morning practice, to spend more time warming up thoroughly. Before putting forth the extra effort, she'd felt stiff and unready when the teacher started class. Except for actual ballet practice, the interminable classes themselves cycled on and on endlessly, past the point of joylessness and disinterest.
Of course, her flowers were sleeping. Inside, there was at least some warmth and color. Outside, the cold reigned in monochrome, the blue- gray barely relieved by the terracotta roofs and dark evergreens peeking through the snow.
Still, she had begun to visit the flowerbeds. The calendar held the only clue she could trust this year; the unrelenting winter certainly told her nothing. Every day she searched, scanning the edges where snow gave way to brick, perhaps with a slim border of soil or mulch visible.
When she finally saw it, it was not alone. A whole family had emerged during the afternoon, heads thrusting sunward through the hard snow, as if it were of no account. Stiff green spikes, each little longer than Freya's fingers, clustered around the drooping white blossoms. And Freya, as she had promised them, began to dance.
Her first attempt at choreography as a tiny child had changed little over the years. There was no music to dance to and no one else to see, and the brick pavement was uneven after the long winter that was not yet over; but still she danced her relief and joy. First the arms straight up into the air, head and hands curling downwards; the snowdrops at her feet. Then the bowl of crocus petals that would soon open to the sky, then the daffodil and narcissus looking out over their domain, and beyond that the tulips and the other flowers of spring... and again and again, until she left off, tired after a day's practice but feeling cleansed and refreshed and happy, renewed for the first time in so very long.
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Anyone who lives in the Northeast or Midwest of the USA should recognize the weather. It's only been a week or two since the weather finally broke here. Along about the middle of February, the snowdrops come up. They run the risk of frostbite, but right now they've recovered and there are patches of snowdrop and crocus blooming, with the daffodils ready to bud and the tulip leaves coming up. Most people here look out for the robins, and some know that the swans stopping on the river are an even more certain sign that winter is passing; but I'm sure Freya looks for her flowers.