"Why are you here so often?" she finally asked, on the last day of autumn on which she had been out to gather beechnuts, but not had had to bend down one single time. The winter was in the air, she could feel it in her bones.
"I like your hair."
That was an elf-answer. Nonsense, like the songs they sang when they frolicked around in the treetops.
"It is beautiful. Like snow." He touched the white bun in which she had always styled her hair, since her first marriage. .
„Glossfindel…Glosswen...Glosswen nîn."
She did not ask what the elven words meant, maybe it was just mockery. Certainly it was, but she preferred the illusion that, maybe, he really liked her hair.
„I will not stay for the winter", he said after awhile. "We are going to visit my grandparents."
"So, are you?" It was strange, she had gotten used to him, somehow. She would miss it, to see him standing here, his head tilted like a child, handing her a present like a grandchild would, if she had one...just more pretty. Yes, it couldn't be by chance that the flowers he gave her seemed more beautiful than those she saw on the meadow outside. There had to be an elvish charm on them.
„You are poor."
She knew that. Why did he tell her?
"I have been apprenticed to a goldsmith for some time now..." He reached into a hidden pocket of his autumn-coloured raiment. "Look…"
„Oh" She didn't say more, she couldn't say more.
It was lovely. An artful network of silver wires, woven into each other like branches of a tree, yet symmetric...it was like...like a snowflake. Yes, that was what a snowflake looked like if you looked very closely. When she had been a little girl, she had sometimes caught a snowflake, she suddenly remembered.
"Take it, Glosswen, please take it. I had to make it anyway, to prove my skill, the master goldsmith has seen it, I have no use for it anymore. And the silver is not worth much, but I think you can sell it well, if the worst should come to the worst, for the hands of men are not able to craft something as delicate – or so I have heard."
"This is...I cannot accept that..."
"Please. It is mine to give to whomever I want, trust me. I have made it with mine own hands, and I want you to have it. Take it, please."
„Thank you." She didn't have the heart to refuse it a second time. Never had she longed to possess something as much as she longed to own this little snowflake. What did it matter if it was just a stupid elvish joke? If she could only look at it for some more time, it was worth it, even if it turned into a glowing coal and set her house on fire.
„When the niphredil are in flower I will be here again, Glosswen."
"The what?"
"The small flowers. Whitetears."
White teardrops...snowdrops. He would return in spring.