Once there was a little boy the age of five.
He had chestnut brown hair, and he had cherry red cheeks.
He was lying in the snow, alone and asleep.
He opened his eyes with his very first breath. His first feeling of feeling alive, was being utterly terrifying. With his second breath, the frost in the wind filled his lungs like daggers of ice. It hurt, and he instinctively sat up.
Where was he?
He was in the middle of a circular clearing in the forest. It was dark, and the wind sounded haunted as it blew through the trees. The boy pulled his legs to his chest and shivered. Then, his first thoughts appeared in his mind.
“Mom! Dad!” He shouted into the forest, because it's always the first thing a child thinks of when he is lost.
But then he remembered something, which was odd, since remembering entailed having previous thoughts, which he believed he didn’t have. The boy wasn’t sure what it was he remembered, but he knew that it was important. His parents were gone. No, not gone- never there. He didn’t have any parents. There must have been someone else who would take care of him, because little boys can’t live alone.
The boy stood up, his first time on his legs. His feet were bare, his pants were full of holes, and his shirt was as thin as a sheet. His fingers were blue, and his body was shaking with fright.
He found himself walking for an hour, then two, and then three through the darkness. Barely awake, the boy came to a small village of a couple families living in shacks. There was a fire ablaze in the middle of the village and all the townspeople were huddling around it - poor people covered in rags.
“Hello?” He squeaked
Then he yelled, “Hello!” That took all his strength. The boy fell twenty feet away from the fire.
Every head turned. Someone shouted back with cries of surprise and confusion.
A woman approached the boy’s body and pulled him in her arms. She was warm and loving. “He’s only a child!” she cried, “Where did you come from?”
The boy looked in her motherly eyes.
“The… the forest.”
“What’s your name boy?” a man hovering over the woman’s shoulder demanded.
“Forrest…” the boy repeated not hearing the last question
“His name is Forrest?” someone asked
“But look at him! Look at his hands!” a man in a scruffy beard cried horrified
Blue pigment started crawling up the boy’s hand and soon took over his whole arm and body. His body felt soft like the snow.
“He’s turning blue! He’s a frost giant!”
“Or the creation of an ice dragon!” another voice rang.
“We’ve heard the stories! No good can come of ice beings!” The bearded man yelled to his village. “We must cast him out!”
The woman holding the boy was hesitant, since she herself was unable to have children, and the feeling of a child in her arms was frightfully comforting. But she listened to what the villagers were saying, and placed the boy back in the snow.
She walked away with the rest of the crowd, looking longingly over her shoulder at the boy.
Once the village was asleep, the boy woke up again. He saw that his hands were blue, and the same texture as the snow. His own breath was as sharp as the wind. He felt better. The cold didn’t bother him anymore. But he was alone, and that was worse then any cold.
He walked up to one of the houses in the village. The inside was dark, but he could make out the sleeping bodies of a family. He tapped on the window with one finger, and was startled to see a frosty pattern swarm over the whole glass.
He stepped back in a fright and trudged through the snow, running into the next house. He tapped on it’s window, and the same frost appeared with a much prettier pattern.
Afraid, the boy ran out to the middle of the village circling the unlit fire pit. He looked at his work in the window of the two houses horrified. Then he noticed something. From between the two houses there were no footprints of his. The snow looked like it hadn’t even been touched.
He looked down at his feet.
He took one step and looked behind him.
Nothing.
He didn’t have any footprints. Finding this most peculiar, he took a couple more steps and found the same result. What fun it was to be walking on the snow!
The boy started dancing around the village taking pleasure in gliding over the snow. He ran to every window and tapped it, creating his beautiful fern-like pattern on windows that glimmered in the moonlight. He also created icicles on the roof that created a comforting whistle in the wind. He grabbed a handful of snow in his hands and blowing on it, made it glow. He threw it in the air with a smile, and it flew in between the tiles of the roofs creating a warm hue.
The boy smiled widely. It was a small wonder that gave him great joy.
A great wind blew in his hair and the boy caught its tail in his hands. It was strong, and didn’t like being restricted from it’s journey. The boy took a jump and the wind’s tail carried him away. Far above the roof tops, far above the people, into the winter’s night- never to be seen by them again.
