Once upon a time, there was a village of little porcelain boys and girls. One of the little boys in particular seemed so very fragile, with white curls and soft, snowy skin. All the glass-people envied him, but for his mind, not for his gentle looks. One of the porcelain men was so jealous, he flew away in a cold wind with his glass friend. While they were whisked away, the friend was caught in a gust so powerful he fell to the ground and shattered into pieces. The glass man looked back, but he had no tears to shed—he was going to a very important place. So he trudged along, and opened the door—the wind pushed him inside, where he had need to go all along. He hit the wall and broke into shards of glass, but he had meant for this to happen, and so he had no regrets.
Well, now the little snow-white boy was all alone. He went searching for the others many times, but could never locate their shattered remains. And so, he went on, alone—he could not afford to break just as all the others had. The gentle-looking boy, in the end, has survived longer than the rest of the small figurines made of glass and fear and irony and sorrow—a porcelain piece of steel. In the end, his throbbing heart was filled with so much loneliness there is no room for all of it, and his heart grew so large that he burst into small fragments, just as the others.
When he breaks, what is left of him is taken to a blindingly white place—so bright that nobody can see how small, how pale, how fragile he is. And he can hear laughing, laughing and talking, and catches flashes of a brilliant yellow and some of red. The porcelain boy smiles for the first time, and walks through the door, where the sounds and scents of happiness are waiting to comfort him. Familiar shapes are holding out their hands, and since he has nowhere else to go, he grabs on—and then there is nothing more left in this world except three piles of porcelain shards.