On the forest edge, snow lay thick. Everything around was as if covered by a heavy blanket of dense white fur. Spruces and birches huddled shivering in fluffy shawls. The stream did not babble beneath the winter veil. It seemed it would be like this forever…
And though the sun shone brighter, as if inadvertently burning through the winter covering — the snowflakes, compacted into sharp ice crystals, saw no threat to their dominion. After this naive warming, frosts and blizzards would surely return, and fresh snow would cover the patches of earth cleared by the hot sun's rays… So they thought. But one day…
No, this won't do! What an impudent fellow!
To dare appear in our time with such green leaves!
And look at him, just look! Pretending to be white, disguising himself as one of us!
But inside he's pink!
Simply put — 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 pushed through in the very centre of a small patch of bare earth. Eyeing the stranger with suspicion, they tried to envelop him in their frost, mocked and whispered to one another, again and again discussing: how foolish it was — now, after four months of absolute dominion by the winter elements, which seemed to have conquered the entire world, to believe in some warming and to grow — practically amidst snowdrifts — as a pink flower.
«Never mind — they gloated — soon another frost will strike, and this little plant won't have time to blink before it becomes an ice crystal like us. Surely it doesn't understand that the time of flowers ended 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 towards the Sun that warmed it and tried not to heed 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:
Do stop being so stubborn! Cover yourself in frost, become like everyone else! Stop reaching for warmth when there is so little of it in this world, where winter has triumphed!
And then the Snowdrop spoke. It raised its delicate head and quietly said:
Poor foolish ice crystals! Do you really think that the Sun, which gave me life amidst your dominion, cannot create a beautiful garden in that very place where you wish to reign eternally, in which I shall be the smallest and most inconspicuous flower… And to become like you… To stop striving for the Sun's warmth… But that is my very life!..»
It did not finish speaking. The snowdrifts trembled from the mad laughter of myriads of sharp ice crystals, revelling in their superiority over the tiny living flower…
But a month later the stream babbled, and the forest edge was covered with a tender carpet of young grass, in which dozens and hundreds of flowers rejoiced in the Sun.
