In the eyes of beholder

But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Far in the North, Moominvalley slept under snow. Here the winter was bleak, neither white nor green, and still cold. Wilted fields stretched between mounds; a dirty road ran along an opaque black river. Snufkin found the scenery elegantly monochrome. It had its own melody of wind in the dry grass, lonely and dispassionate. A dark wall of fir forest grew near from the cloudy afternoon non-light. The road didn’t go near the trees, and he stopped to contemplate the forest. It was dark and deep and lovely in an ominous gothic way. And it was silent. It kept its melody hidden from occasional passers-by. Snufkin stopped, and stepped closer, and listened. Nothing. Usually, he could discern a melody of any place, maybe not the whole thing at once, but some notes would evolve in the first moments. Such thick fir forests usually start with a goldcrest tune. But this one… Snufkin walked towards the forest edge, touched an outlier tree. Cold. Rough, wet. Silent, as if it never sprouted a leaf. The forest kept his secret well, barred the way with fallen trunks, gripped the intruder by boughs and roots, cast shadows over any gaps between the trees. It was a very hard hundred steps before he stopped to listen again. Now trees surrounded him from all sides and closed the sky. They should– But all he could hear was his own heavy breath. No creak of wood, no rustle of creepers, no sighs of falling leaves or needles. No goldcrests. Pure silence. And cold. Cold creeping under the scarf and into the sleeves, numbing cheeks, rising up the legs right through the shoe soles as if he walked barefoot. Or as if the whole forest was an underskirt of a giant groke. Snufkin realised he did not want to pry out that melody. It might not be beautiful at all. The way back was even harder. When did boughs become iron, and bark, a sandpaper? Where was “back”? The usual sense of direction failed him, all tangled firs looked the same, and the sky did not show any hints, its grey almost black now. And the seeping cold, and the silence. It was heavy and dense like a swamp. Snufkin wriggled out of his backpack, caught dead in brambles. Still, each step was taking more and more effort, and it was more than a hundred steps, but the forest did not end. At some moment, Snufkin thought with bitterness that he’d break his promise to return to Moominvalley in spring. He smirked at the irony – weren’t mumriks supposed to break all rules? And what was a promise if not a rule set by yourself? And then he glimpsed a bright orange spot at eleven o’clock. Like a goldcrest’s golden crest. He rushed towards it with the last power, and the power after the last one– Almost breathless, Snufkin fell out of the bush fringe to the road, definitely not where he left the path for the forest. Under a hill on the other side of the road, a fire was flickering. Barely feeling his feet, he headed straight to it. It was as warm as it promised, and the other wanderer stretched out by the campfire didn’t mind Snufkin joining him. “Its melody is silence,” the stranger croaked. His light blue eyes flickered from under a decrepit hat held together by a short, thin rope. And overall, he was very worn out by travel and time; the coat had more patches than original fabric, and the short fur on the front paws was almost grey. “Did you go there?” Snufkin asked. “Nah.” The stranger blinked in a catlike manner. “When I passed it by once, like you now, I felt too lazy to explore. Unlike you now.” “Why should I be like you?” Snufkin scoffed after the numbing cold left his fingers, and interest in the world returned. “Because you are my son. Snufkin.”