“What IS this stuff?!” Exclaimed Mirka, holding out her hands throwing her head back to the sky. Maeve laughed in astonishment. “What do you mean, ‘what is it?’ It’s snow!” she giggled.

“Snow?! I’ve never heard of such a thing! It’s absolutely wonderful!” Mirka replied before falling right backward into the soft white bed beneath her. Even without heavy clothes, she was so fascinated that cold didn’t seem to bother her. Maeve smiled to herself at her friend’s wonderment of this new type of weather, and thought to herself how incredible it must be to experience something like this for the first time. “It must be similar to how I felt about the glowing trees, or the castle, or the dragons,” she pondered. After a few more moments of thinking, she joined her friend on the ground by tackling her.

Laughing until their abdomens were sore, the girls enjoyed a much needed break from the heavy tasks at hand. Mirka had shown Maeve how to mix up the right herb to stop the bleeding of a wounded soldier, and now Maeve was teaching her how to make a snow angel. Mirka had taught Maeve how to shoot an arrow, and now Maeve was teaching her how to build a snow fort and stick up on snowballs. For every weight that had been laid on the two young girls over the past year, the snow allowed Maeve to finally give them back their childhood - even if only just for a day.