Winter Drop

Freya’s second winter on the hill, and the first she has spent alone with it. She is out before the sun, boots printing the frost, past vines cut back to bone. The dam has iced over. Everything she works for is asleep, and in the blue half-light it is hard to tell sleep from loss.

She waits. The sun comes up the way it always does — slowly, then all at once — and finds the glass before it finds her. One drop of melt catches it and holds it, a small gold weight. Steam off her cup. Warmth, finally, on her face. Nothing in the rows has moved, but everything has changed. The year isn’t gone. It’s resting. So, now, is she.