Maybe he didn't look closely enough. Or long enough. Maybe he didn't like what that would mean. Saying yes to... a certain kind of path... a path that wasn't, every bit, his own. Or maybe he just forgot too easily. I'm sure he forgot too easily. But that is how things happened, and it does me no good to worry about it now.                          

Over and out across the snow, onto something different, she supposes. Letting the snow blow over the light trail she left behind. Sometimes, ever decreasingly so, she's tempted to charge back back down, stamping heavily with boots, so she would be able to find it again if she wanted, but she knows more and more what a foolish idea that would be. She has to shrug her shoulders and walk along, paying more attention to the way the sunlight creates shadows in the footprints she makes. And loving those footprints, those shadows. And the people who play with her in the snow. And the snow itself. And those acres of pines with their smells that remind her of being little and full of wonder and having lungs filled with the sharpest, clearest winter air.