It was late morning when the snowfall began. The rime had crept over the trees the night before, leaving a constellation of shining sparks across the landscape and solidifying the leaves into the litter left forgotten in the nooks and crannies of the forest. As the sun climbed over the horizon, only a pale ambient light could be seen, slowly illuminating the frozen world and leaving it in a dull and grey state.

But then the snowfall began. Thick flakes of soft white, like little tufts of down gently floating down and giving shape to the air currents. That was when the Boy saw them. He had been born not too many seasons ago, and had yet to experience the wonders the falling precipitation could reveal; he had seen the way the leaves bounced off of the air in a certain area, but falling leaves are sporadic and he had never caught the full picture. Rain is steady, and he had seen that, but it’s much too forceful and tended to drive straight through the shapes in the air. But snowfall could show them, and he finally was both old enough and aware enough to be present for it.

The shapes were blurry, more of a mass than a defined area, but, as the snowfall grew thicker, they became clearer. Several hours later, the Boy could see the detents the shapes made in the fallen snow and make out their edges in the flurries. He wasn’t frightened by the human shapes in the snow-filled air; he had heard from his siblings that these weren’t something to be frightened of. He trusted his siblings enough that he could choose to believe them in the face of these unknown things and so, the Boy wasn’t afraid when one of the ghosts approached him.

The ghost reached out an arm, a snow-less space in the air, only visible because of the absence of the heavy flakes. It touched his head, a soft brush of air, and he bowed to it, silently inviting it to continue. When he looked back up, several others had come close and now surrounded him, covering his head and keeping the snow off him. The air warmed up around him, as the ghosts kept the hot air he gave off from escaping into the frozen forest. He stayed like that for several hours until he felt he could uncurl from where he had laid up the night before, the blue that had been creeping over his fingertips and nose slowly giving way to the pink that naturally sat there. As he rose, somewhat unsteady, the ghosts followed him slowly, keeping the Boy company until the bright fires of his home could be seen. There, they stopped, not daring to leave the forest and enter the bright firelight of the camp. When he stepped beyond the shelter of the cover of leafless trees and formless ghosts, the bitter cold returned in full force. He bowed once more to the absences, pulled his thin coat tighter, and turned towards home. He didn’t, couldn’t, see them bow in return.