On the forest edge, snow lay thick. Everything around seemed covered by a heavy blanket of dense white fur. Spruces and birches huddled nervously in fluffy shawls. The stream did not murmur beneath the winter veil. It seemed it would be this way forever…
And even though the sun shone brighter, as if carelessly burning through the winter covering—the snowflakes, compacted into sharp ice crystals, saw no threat to their dominion in this. After this naive warming would come frosts and blizzards again, fresh snow would cover the patches cleared by the hot sun… So they thought. But one day…
No, this is unacceptable! What an audacious one!
To dare appear in our time with such green leaves!
And look at it! Pretending to be white, masquerading as one of us!
But inside it's pink!
Simply a foolish dreamer! Hopelessly out of touch with reality…
Thus hissed and grated the ice crystals and snowflakes, surrounding in a tight ring the tiny snowdrop that had broken through in the very center of a small thawed patch. Eyeing the stranger suspiciously, they tried to envelop it in their frost, mocked and whispered to each other, again and again discussing: how foolish it was—now, after four months of absolute dominion by the winter elements, which seemed to have conquered all the world, to believe in some warming and grow—almost amid snowdrifts—as a pink flower.
«Nothing—they gloated—soon another frost will strike, and this little plant won't have time to blink before it turns into an ice crystal like us. Doesn't it understand that the time of flowers passed half a year ago?! They exhausted themselves, withered, faded—autumn proved it—and the era of winter has come. Now the forest community has no need for these naive grasses. Snow—that is the highest development of nature, its reality!»
And the Snowdrop stretched toward the Sun that warmed it and tried not to pay attention to the icy grating. With all its petals it absorbed the life-giving warmth and light, trying to take in as much as possible to warm the earth near itself…
The creatures of winter raged, trying with all their might to freeze the firstborn of spring. Losing patience, they cried out to it at the top of their voices:
Stop your stubbornness! Cover yourself with frost, become like everyone else! Stop reaching for warmth when there is so little of it in this world where winter has won!
And then the Snowdrop spoke. It raised its tender head and quietly said:
Poor foolish ice crystals! Do you really think that the Sun, which gave me life during your dominion, will not be able to create a beautiful garden in that very place where you wish to reign forever, in which I will be the smallest and most inconspicuous flower… And to become like you… To stop striving for the sun's warmth… But that is my life!..»
It did not finish speaking. The snowdrifts trembled from the mad laughter of myriads of sharp ice crystals, reveling in their superiority over the tiny living flower…
But a month later the stream murmured, and the forest edge was covered with a tender carpet of young grass, in which dozens and hundreds of flowers rejoicing in the Sun were scattered.
