Snow Girl
Mary and Jim James had wanted a child for as long as they could remember. They had prayed and wished upon stars but they were never blessed. They were gentle people, Mary loved to bake and Jim was a keen gardener, both were ideally suited to being parents. For most families around the small village they lived in, winter was a joyous occasion for the children to play outside in the snow and ice-skate, but it only served to remind them of what they didn't have.
Then one day, a small girl turned up on their doorstep. She was tiny, with skin white as snow, eyes blue as ice and long straight hair the colour of sunlight on a winter's day. She had the most innocent face they had ever seen. She was wearing all white, a white furry coat, white flannel trousers and boots of the same material as her coat. Her name was Lumi, which was the local word for snow.
Mary and Jim took her in and loved her as their own. Jim sat her on his knee and read her stories and tucked her in at night while Mary baked her cakes and made sure she had her scarf when she went out. Lumi returned their affections ten times over and played with the other children every day. It was evident to anyone who saw the little family that they loved each other to the ends of the earth and back. Lumi followed her parents around everywhere with adoration in her eyes, and sometimes at night her parents would sit, there, gazing in wonder as they thanked God again and again for their little miracle.
Lumi loved her friends and they loved her. When they played out on the ice, she showed natural talent and soon she was as good as the children who had been skating their entire lives. Her best friends were Stephen, an angelic dark-haired boy with dimples in his cheeks, freckles and a cheeky grin and Seraphina, a tall girl with olive toned skin, black hair, high cheekbones and a long straight nose. The three played in the dark woods that surrounded the village, full of huge fir trees and robins, they played in the snow where they would build forts and have snowball fights, they played on the ice where they would play games like tag and duck duck goose and they played inside where they would sit and talk as friends, even of a young age do. They spent the entire winter this way, having fun, eating cookies and laughing.
However, as the spring drew near, Lumi's friends and family noticed that she was becoming withdrawn and quiet, becoming so pale that she was almost fading away against the diminishing background of white. Her worried mother tried to feed her up, noticing that her appetite was decreasing and her father tried to talk to her but she would not talk to them. Her skin became quite translucent and soon she was so thin you could see her spine through her stomach. Her friends were terrified, trying everything to get her to eat and drink, but she hid herself away, closing up like a clam.
But then one day, she was gone, vanished like a puff of air. The entire village searched for hours and hours, Mary and Jim with tears of terror and sorrow streaming down their cheeks as though they knew that they would not ever see their daughter, whom they had loved as much as life itself again. The search was called off a week later, when all hope was lost. Her parents and best friends were distraught and were not seen with a smile for many months.
Above the clouds, at the palace of the Snow Queen Laetitcia, Lumi was pleading with her to let her return as a mortal child to her parents, for Lumi was a snow girl, children sent as snowflakes from heaven to the mortal world for a winter. Each has winter on earth before dissolving with the coming of spring, never to be seen again. And as Lumi sat there at the Queen's feet, begging with all her might to be returned to her friends and family. And so Laetitcia, looking upon her with pity, tried to help. "I cannot give you your wish child, but you may return to your parents once a year, to comfort them as they feel your spirit within them".
And so now once a year as a snowflake, Lumi returns home to her ever grieving parents, who cry for her loss and comforts them as best she can by wiping away their tears with her gentle touch, all the while weeping her own silent tears.