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Carvings Of The Cotton Wool Prince
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In despair he dropped his head down onto his raised knees, forgetting the
icicle tear that still clasped his chin, like a delicate brittle starfish on
an opal stone. The hands of the icicle lost their grip and cracked, until it
slowly slid from his chin, gliding swiftly in a straight line downwards, and
cutting a path through the cloud on which he was sitting. The boy expected
to hear a (admittedly very distant and quiet) plop as the icicle pierced the
water of the stream, instead, the sound of shattering china reverberated its
way upward to his small ears reddened by the cold. He held his breath in
surprise, and peered over the small hole left in the icicles wake, a wisp of
breath frost coiling around his face as it left his lips.
There below were the smithereens of his shattered tear, scattered on a small
round patch of ice on the stream. The ground all around the ice was
cushioned in the deepest, richest soft white down you could imagine. From
where he was sitting he could only see a pure albino snow quilt filling the
hole in the cloud from way below. On the quilt were two tree like, three
twigged footprints of a bird. The boy put his face right to the hole and
tilted his head at an angle. Only by doing this could he see the fringes of
green at the edge of the snow. On the grass beside stood a small magpie,
preening the snowflakes from his feathers. It stops and stares at the patch
of ice on the stream, tilting its head from side to side. It looks around
once more and takes flight, a metre off the ground. After circling the edges
of the cloud hole, it swoops down on the fragments of tear, shimmering in
the moonlight, picks up the largest splinter in it's beak and vanishes from
view.
The boy just lies there, on his cloud, not moving. He knows that his
snowstorm was unsuccessful in covering the green around, even though it was
now under the ebony glove of night anyway. But whenever he looked directly
down through the hole in the cloud no matter where he positioned his head,
all he can see is snow. The small space his tear made, was now filled. And
while he may have set his sights a little too high in the first instance, he
could now accept his place as a snowmaker. Not THE snow maker but a
handmaster of the winter at least.
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