The boy from the winter’s isle

Once there was a boy, living in a harsh, cold and unfriendly world. It was everything around him, that told him that he didn’t belong to this place. But more than all, the cold blowing wind, the everlasting snow and the growing jags of ice made his life a burden to bare. The only enjoyment left to him, was to watch the lunar globe cross the night, surrounded by glittering stars while listening to the croaking of the crows. And as he wandered across the land, once more hindered by raging storms, his body sunken half in snow, tortured by the spikes of frozen water, he felt that he had to do something.

So he sat down near a rock that was covered with a thick and glaring layer and started thinking. He looked around in the sullen landscape that he had to call a home, gazed up to the moonlit sky, listened to the crows that passed the horizons and yet couldn’t find a solution. Slowly, he started to freeze on his back, and wanted to stand up. Doing so, he slipped on a plate of ice that had grown under his feet, and bumped his head on the frozen rock. Looking at his reflection on the shiny surface, he realized that he wanted to be just like it.

If ever moving, the rock could easily slide on the snow. He could never be set in pain by jags of ice, because he was already wrapped in it. And no storm would ever be strong enough to hinder it’s movement or break it. So the boy locked himself up in a big block of ice. From now on, he could move freely through his world, and roamed to its borders, finding out that it was an island. Soon he had explored the whole of it, but he did not feel as happy as he expected. For it was before, that he used to climb the trees, risking freezing, painful hands, just to get on top and have the best view of the crow’s skyride and be reimbursed for the endeavour. More than that, he could not even sit down and turn up his head towards the sky, even if it used to make his back aching cold. The enjoyment was gone. The burden was still there.

Since it was terribly cold on his isle, he failed to crack his prison open. Feeling unluckier than ever, he restlessly followed the coastline and watched the sea. The moon drew a few more circles along the black sky of an endless night, before the boy saw something in the far distance, he could then identify as some kind of light. Even though he knew that ice would swim on water, he was horribly afraid of leaving his island, fearing to drown, maybe just following some illusion that his scattered mind might have called upon him. The answer was given to him, when he turned around and realized what had originally made him seek for a new perspective. He had become even harsher, colder and unfriendlier on the outside than the hell of winter he used to inhabit. As his sad heart grew warm with bravery, he finally set out and yielded to the current that soon drove him forward.

Sometimes the boy in his block drifted off to the left or the right, but at last he always remained steady enough on his track through the ocean. The sooner he came to the unknown, the more fearful he got. But with the fear, so rose his curiosity inside. Days and days passed, and the light on the horizon turned bigger and bigger. Every now and then, the gentle cradle of the waves made him fall asleep. Then, after drifting with the tide for a long time, a heavy jolt forced him awake all of a sudden. Opening his eyes he discovered, that he had landed on a rocky beach that blended into green grassland. Slowly he slided along in his brick, always following the direction the light seemed to shine from. He arrived at a place, where everything was brightly illuminated.

All around there were people standing and smiling, smiling at each other, also smiling at him. But they were free, not caught in a big pile of ice that was once thought to be protection and solution from a life without shelter and mercy. He felt so very strange to them, when he recognized, that each and every one was standing in a spot filled with plants in different, bright colors, he had never seen before. The boy could feel, that they were in a state of hapiness, and wondered how he could ever join them being bound to the narrowing walls of ice he could just look through, but not break. Panic occupied his heart, driving away the curiosity in an instant. He just had to journey back to his home, to the island of the neverending winter, feeling that he could never belong here.

And it was once again the turnaround, the act of looking back at what was lying behind him, that should change his fate. All on the way he afore moved up from the shore, there had water seeped down and trickled into the soil. And right where he was standing, he saw a small plant emerging from the ground, slowly opening its blossom. The warmth of the place had begun to tear apart the boundaries of frost around him.  Soon set free again, feeling the blood flowing back into his limbs, causing some pain at first, he sank to the ground and raised his head. A globe, just like the moon, yet bigger and impressively blazing, was on top of the sky.

Now that he thought about it, he concluded that everyone around him must’ve formerly come from the winter’s isle he once inhabitated. Some of their beautiful plants were as high as his knees, some had grown long enough, so he could hide between them. But all of them were bigger and more numerous than those around his own feet. The boy could not remember to have ever met any other person throughout his life in the bleak and cold wasteland. He was the last to escape the barren solitude, leaving it abandoned as just for the crows to stay. He took delight in looking at what he was taught to call “sun”, just as he once savoured the countless hours watching the moon. Even more he appreciated the people around him, who introduced him into their world which was full of  many enjoyable things but also tasks and challenges that he would have missed from the beginning of his own existence if he had ever known of theirs.

Spotting something moving the horizon, hearing a distant croaking from what was obviously a flight of crows, he knew that everything left from his past was a mere memory. He knew that he had finally arrived.