“Just a coffee, please.”
Venedict smiled and poured the beverage into a disposable cup for the girl. She took a
sip, and inhaled through her nose deeply. She felt the hot, pleasantly bitter drink pass through her
body, warming her insides like a liquid blanket.
“There now,” he said. “Do you have any coins?”
Anah smiled and nodded, removing some shiny pieces from her coat and dropping them
into a copper kettle on the countertop.
“Thank you, miss. Have a pleasant morning.”
“You too, Venedict,” responded Anah as she left the shop.
Anah continued her journey, making her way down a path that encircled the entire lake.
Several minutes after she left the coffeehouse, she selected a spot that was concealed from the
path by a mott of brown, leafless, icicle-laden trees. From her basket she removed a small, but
thick carpet, and laid it onto the edge of the frozen lake. She knelt on the carpet, and set the
basket beside her.
Anah grabbed a handful of snow from the banks behind her and began to craft her story.
She carefully patted each ball of snow into the perfect size, flattening some, leaving others
round, and set them into a pattern on the ice, which projected outward from her place on the
carpet. She etched lines into the surface of the lake using icicles. The shape that formed around
her looked like a frozen representation of a massive chemical composition.
Before shaping the final ball of snow, Anah pulled a silver thread from the skirt of her
dress and wrapped it around several strands of her hair, along with a short, previously composed
message on a tiny, scroll of paper. She removed a pair of scissors from the basket and snipped the
lock she had wrapped in the thread, then sculpted the final snowball around the lock of hair. As
she placed the final snowball, she mumbled a chant to herself, and pictured the boy who would
receive her message. He was small, with unkempt blond hair that half-concealed his bright-blue
eyes. She knew of him from conversations she overheard between her grandmother and the other
muses. This boy was gifted. Even at his young age, they knew he was talented in crafting a story
out of words from the inspiration they provided him. Anah pressed the final snowball with her
hands as she concentrated on the image of his face, willing her message to reach him. She
pressed the snowball until she heard the ice crack, jumping backward—startled by the sound—
onto the banks with just enough time to grab her carpet and basket before they disappeared into
the swirling, inky water.
Standing on the shore of the lake she realized the air had become warmer. The sun was
just beginning to rise, slashing the distant horizon with a bright steak of rose-gold. Anah turned
toward her house and ran, hoping to make it home before anyone noticed she was missing.
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