Once upon a time, in a land far away, a daughter was separated from her father as a snowstorm descended upon the Forest on the Mountain.

The sky had been clear that morning, as they made their way to the far side of the Mountain where the snow lay clean and untouched. Though the father had known better than to risk the winter’s mercurial moods, he had been unable to resist his daughter’s plaintive pleas and yielded to her excitement over her latest gift: a small, red sled with runners shaped as leaping fish, crafted specifically for her by the local fond blacksmith.

Having no greater love than that which he held for his daughter, the father took the pair of them up the Mountain early that morning and spent its passing pushing his squealing daughter up the snow covered slope time and time again. Though his legs ached and his heart beat uncomfortably in his chest, he found ample reward in his daughter’s delight and thanked the heavens in his heart for the opportunity to spend such a moment together with his child.

But before he could even be aware of it, the clear blue sky frosted over into a dangerous pale gray. Small flecks of snow floated down onto them from above, sending the giggling child tumbling after them, grasping at them with her small mittened hands. Struggling to maintain an appearance of calm despite a dull grip of dread, the father gathered his daughter and her sled and hurried them back home.

But the sky darkened and descended. The air, roused by the cold, stirred itself with a soft rush of freezing wind. Even as the child watched with wide, wondering eyes, small flakes of snow grew and gathered themselves into great falling sheets of sleet. They caught against her clothes and melted into them, chilling them with their touch.

The child shivered and buried herself deeper into her father’s arms.

In an encroaching swell of desperation, her father discarded the sled and left it behind as the trail became blanketed by snow. He laid his daughter upon his back with her arms around his neck, and hastened with as much speed as he could muster. But the ill woken wind would not let him have his way. It pushed and pulled at him one way then the other, threatening to rob him of his balance and send him tumbling off the disappearing path. He bent his head low with a grim determination, determined to carry his daughter through the storm. But hurried and uncertain of his way, he stumbled.

The child, her arms weary from clutching her father’s neck, felt her hands part at the sudden movement. Before she could cry, the ground rose up to meet her in a rush and she tumbled head over heels off the beaten path.

The world whirled and pitched about her for a terrifying moment, but she came to a sudden, jarring stop much sooner than she expected. Disoriented, breathless, but with no other thought than to get back to her father, she scrambled up onto her feet with a hand raised to see through the storm. But to her dismay, she could see no sign of her father or the path from which she had fallen.

“Father!” she cried. “Father!”

“Daughter!” came her father’s voice. “Oh, what have I done? Oh my daughter, my daughter, where are you?”

Snow frosted winds churned and tore through the air around her with a howl.

“Father!” she cried, again. “Father!”

“Daughter!” his voice cried back, but already it grew faint. “Daughter!”

“Father!”

She ran towards the sound of his voice, but the powdery ground slid beneath her small boots, and tripped her face first into a thick blanket of snow.

“Daddy!” she cried, her voice breaking. But there was no reply.

She picked herself up as quickly as she could, and brushed the ice from her face with clumsy, hurried swipes of her mittened hands. She looked around, desperate for any clue as to which direction her father might be, but the world around her tossed and whirled with billowing curtains of snow.

Her heart breaking, she staggered after where she had last heard his voice, fighting to make headway through the storm. But no matter how hard she pushed or threw herself against the wind, it pushed back with twice the strength, blowing her back two steps for every one she made.

All the while, the ground piled higher with snow.

Shivering now from the cold, the child crawled into the hollow of a nearby log and huddled as deep inside of it as she could. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, sobbing as she panted in small, panicked gasps.

Then a voice echoed from the mouth of the hollow, faint against the background of the storm.

“You’re going to die.”

Trembling uncontrollably now, she looked towards the source of the strange voice to see a young boy crouched down near the log. He looked to be about her age, but was dressed inappropriately for the weather. He was bare footed, and was wearing only a thin pair of trouser pants and a light vest that flapped idly in the wind.

“I know you can’t hear me,” he said sadly. “But you’re going to die in there. I’ve seen it before. I would help if I could, but it’s forbidden.”

He sat himself down at the end of the log. “But you won’t be alone,” he said. “I can do that much, at least.”

She tried to respond, but no words would come. Her teeth chattered and her throat seemed to have tightened itself against the cold.

“But I can hear you,” she managed at last.

His head snapped toward her, eyes wide.

“Really?!” he gasped. His eyes locked onto hers, searching. “You can hear me?”

She struggled to nod, the movement barely discernible from the rest of her trembling body.

“Then it will work!” he whooped, scrambling onto his feet. “My parents said so! It will work!”

He slid into the hollow beside her, but hesitated for a brief moment. He touched her arm, just once, as if she might suddenly bite, or burst into flame. But nothing happened.

He smiled, delighted, and placed it firmly onto her shoulder.

“I’m Aurm,” he said.

She tried to answer, but found she could do nothing now but shiver and stare at the strange, sudden boy beside her.

Then a small flicker of warmth fluttered in her toes. It was so light at first as to be barely noticeable, but it was there, and real, and not just a seeming of wishful thought. Slow but steady, it crept its way up her legs and back, growing in warmth as it did, until it covered her entirely in its glow. It soaked her freezing limbs in a seamless, enduring warmth, and melted away the dull bind of cold until finally, she breathed a long sigh of relief and sagged, exhausted, against the inner hollow of the log.

“Don’t fall asleep,” warned the boy, Aurm. He turned to crawl out of the log. “You need to move around. Your body needs to remember how to be alive. Come on.”

She groaned at the thought of the effort, but followed him out of the log nevertheless, curious about her most unexpected friend.

“So what are you doing out here?” he asked, once she emerged.

“I was playing with my father,” she said. She patted the snow off of her clothes. “We were sledding.”

“Me too!” said Aurm. “I mean, I was playing too.”

“With who?” she asked.

The boy shrugged and scuffed a foot against the snow. “Just myself. I don’t really have anyone to play with. Except for my parents, sometimes, when they’re not busy. But they’re resting now, at home.”

He pointed a finger vaguely up the Mountain.

She looked to see where he might be pointing to, but was surprised to see the blizzard still raging overhead. Clouds of snow spun and flew through the air around them, as if carried by strong, stormy winds. But the child felt neither the wind nor the cold.

She looked down and was surprised again to find she was standing on top of a great snowdrift, as if it were solid ground, and not a powdery pile of loose snow. She jumped, lightly at first, then higher and higher. But the snow remained firm and unyielding beneath her feet. She stomped her weight down several times as hard as she could, amazed at the strange new experience.

“But what about you? Where do you live?” Aurm asked from behind her. The child had completely forgotten about him in her newfound delight.

“I live with my father,” she replied. “He lives at the bottom of the Mountain.”

“Well that could mean anything,” said Aurm. He thought for a moment, then his eyes widened. “Do you mean he lives under the Mountain?”

“Of course not, silly,” she said, condescendingly. “What could possibly live under a mountain?”

Aurm stared at her with an odd, almost wondering look.

“We should get you home,” he said, at last. “If your dad is anything like mine, he’s probably worried enough to be angry.”

He turned and started walking up the Mountain. “Come on. I know someone that can help.”

Curious and not knowing what else to do, she followed.

For several moments, the two children walked together in the strange, quick, companionable silence that only ever falls between the very young. They held it between them as simply as they would a length of string, and made no other noise save the soft rhythmless tread of their feet on the snow.

“Why isn’t the snow falling on us?” the child asked, after some time.

“Because I asked it not to,” Aurm replied, without turning or stopping.

“You ask it not to?” she echoed. “And it does it?”

“Not always,” he admitted. He looked up at the storm and smiled in a manner appropriate to one sharing a secret with a constant and longtime friend. “It didn’t before when I asked, but I think it’s listening now because it’s happier for some reason.”

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“But we’re here now,” he added, stopping at the face of an enormous, dark boulder embedded deep within the mountainside. He walked slowly, almost politely, up to the rock and placed his hands on its dark, jagged surface.

“Good morning,” he said.

A good way above their heads, a patch of rock, nearly as wide as Aurm was tall, twitched, stirred, then blinked open to reveal a single large dark eye of the deepest midnight blue. It peered around above them before looking down and settling on the boy with a bright golden ringed pupil the size of a small melon.

“Aurm,” rumbled a dark, gravelly, voice. To the child, the voice didn’t seem to come from the rock itself as much as it seemed to simply hang and resonate in the air about her. “Good morning, little friend. It is good to see you. Are you out playing again?”

Aurm shook his head, hands still pressed against its surface. “No,” he said, then checked himself. “Well, I was, but then I found someone who needed help.”

The rock’s gaze shifted onto the child, who suddenly felt very fragile beneath the scrutiny of the large unblinking eye.

“Oh, Aurm,” it said. Its voice resonated in the child’s chest and she felt, more than heard, a soft groan of disappointment.

“Oh, Aurm,” it said again. “What have you done? You know what has been declared. Their fates are not ours to touch or sway.”

“But she can see me,” said Aurm, defensively. “She can see me. Father said I’m allowed to help if they can see me.”

“She can see you?” it repeated, as if each word was to it a strange and foreign sound. “How incongruous.” It directed its voice towards the daughter. “Do you hear me even now, little thing?”

She hesitated, wondering if it was her even proper place to respond, but nodded when Aurm smiled in encouragement.

The boulder made a long, low, thoughtful sound.

“She just wants to go home,” said Aurm. “Can you help her?”

But the boulder did not respond. It gave no indication that it had even heard the boy, and stared at the child as if it could see nothing else. The rings around its pupil twitched in erratic, nearly indiscernible expansions and contractions of movement.

“What is this?” it said at last, in a dark, soft voice. Its eye narrowed. “Is this a riddle? Why are you under there?”

Confused, the child looked at Aurm for help. But he looked back at her with a look as lost as of her own.

“But it seems you are not yet self aware of it,” it mused, when she did not reply. It sighed, and the sound rippled through the children like the currents of a river. “As it is too often so. Come, curious little thing. Place your hands upon me. There is much I would yet understand of you.”

But the daughter did not move.

“It’s okay,” Aurm waved invitingly. “It won’t hurt.”

“Do not be afraid,” said the boulder. “It is not my wish to harm you. It does not fall within my purpose to harm any living being as young as yourself, regardless of where they may have come from or what they truly are.”

Only somewhat comforted, the child walked forward one nervous step at a time, encouraged the entire way by a steady stream of Aurm’s reassurances, then slowly placed her hands on the boulder’s dark craggy surface with a touch that thrilled and jittered up her arms.

The boulder’s eye snapped wide open, and its pupil shrank abruptly into a miniscule yellow dot. A low, shocked gasp pulled through the air, and in that brief moment it seemed to the child that the mysterious source of its voice now resided in the very center of her mind.

There was a noise like the gnashing of mountainous teeth, and when it spoke again, the boulder’s voice shook with a cold, shocked fury.

“Remove your hands.”

The child froze, terrified by the suddenness and the sheer force of the boulder’s malcontent. Its great eye swiveled down and glared at the child’s inaction, seething with a near palpable air of revile.

“Remove. Your. Hands. At. Once,” it snarled, crunching out each word in a crescendo of violence. Its voice grew colder and darker, a churning of molten earth at the bottom of a frozen sea.

Tears welled in the child’s eyes, and she took a halting, frightened step back.

“Aurm,” it spat. Its furious gaze snapped towards the boy, who also stepped back, startled by the intensity of the boulder’s regard.

Its glare and voice softened. “Oh, Aurm,” it said, before turning its singular gaze back upon the child.

A cold, frozen silence loomed in their small enclosure beneath the storm. The child sobbed in small, terrified gasps, too terrified to move, even to the point of not daring to wipe her runny nose and eyes.

A wisp of remorse flickered in the behemoth’s dark eye. It gazed back and forth between Aurm and the child, then up at the storm that whirled overhead, then back down on to the two of them again, before slowly closing.

“But it is only a child,” it whispered, after a long moment, as if it were finishing a thought that it had been unraveling inside itself.

It sighed a long, tired sigh, and the sound of it stirred through Aurm and the child like a haze over flame.

“It is not possible for you to understand,” it began to say very slowly, then paused. It opened its enormous eye to look directly at the boy. “It is not possible for you to understand, young Aurm, the complete circle of consequences that you have drawn into being this day.”

“What?” asked Aurm, confused. “But I was just helping her.”

“Then you were as the bird that flies against the wind and goes nowhere,” the boulder replied firmly, but not unkindly. “Even then a life’s worth cannot always be weighed so simply against its death. Truly, it may have been the greatest kindness to leave her to freeze and die.”

It stared down at the boy, and its voice shook with a dreadful finality.

“Your actions and your actions alone, young Aurm, have turned our world down a forked path of fate with no more wisdom and foresight than the simple, clueless instinct of a child.”

Then it did the last thing either of the children expected.

It burst into laughter.

Loud and intense, the sudden clamor of it thrummed through the children in almost painful waves of intensity. It set their teeth on edge and enveloped their senses. It was all their minds could do to grasp the edges of it as it beat about them like the pulsing of a giant’s heart.

“But who can say that it is such an unfortunate thing?” it said at last, its voice steeped with merry timbre. The children sagged with relief as its laughter faded.

“Certainly not I, I am only so old. Destiny begets destiny. I cannot see beyond my horizon any more than a raindrop can see the crashing ends of the sea.”

“Though it is not without some measure of comfort,” it said, gazing on the two children before it. “That it is not the most wicked of hands to have diverged our world, still again, and send it hurtling towards another new and wondrous fate.”

Here it cast its eye up at the sky that swirled and surged overhead as if it could see through the storm’s heavy clouds to the heavens beyond. Though she could not say why, the child felt with absolute certainty that if it had arms or hands it would have raised them.

“How strange a day this is,” it said aloud, to neither child in particular. It cast its gaze downward, then closed its eye. “And how strange are the footsteps of our world. I, having not stirred since time immemorial and the coming of the second Age, when Man sang his first song beneath the schismed red sky, presumed my days of prosperity to be all left behind me, spinning as leaves in my wake.”

“But to have borne witness to this great turn of heaven’s wheel with my own eye,” it continued. “And to have been granted the rare pleasure of understanding its deep truth is an honor too exalted for the likes of this lowly mote. Could I ever have been more blessed or propertied than I now find myself to be at this very point in time?”

It paused for a brief moment, and Aurm looked over at the child, confused. The child, having only just touched upon the thinnest thread of the boulder’s imparted insight, stared blankly back.

“Now,” said the boulder. It opened its dark eye and looked towards the child, its pupil soft and large. “I would ask your forgiveness, little one, and offer my humble apologies, though I wonder if you are in an appropriate state to receive it.”

When the child did not move or respond, it sighed with a deep breath that curled gently with amusement.

“Aurm.”

Its gaze swiveled back towards the boy, who was clearly befuddled by the happenings of all that had just taken place.

“Aurm,” it rumbled again. “The child belongs to the village in the valley. Take her down to the edge of the Forest by the woodcutter’s hut. Her father will be there when you arrive, desperate and worried. You must hurry and do this soon, your Touch is already fading.”

Aurm scowled. “Then why did you not just say that earlier?”

The boulder chuckled, a muted echo of its thunderous laughter.

“My apologies to you as well, young Aurm,” it said. “One stumbles often when one gazes too far ahead. It seems that even I have much to learn.”

Then it looked upon the child one last time, and gazed deeply into her eyes. “But before we depart, little thing. I would leave you with a final word.”

“Everything that loves in life are different faces of the same mountain. Everything that consumes are the many colors of its shadow. There is a fear in every joy. There is recompense in every loss. It will seem at times, little thing, like there is no constant, no certainty in our ever shifting struggle for balance. But bear your fears with courage, it is the road that circles back that teaches us of our home.”

With each word it spoke, its large, dark eye grew and enveloped her vision until it became all that she could see. Its voice expanded and filled her mind with its soft growl.

“Farewell, little thing. Be wise, be kind, be strong. We shall not meet again.”

When her senses returned, she was surprised to find herself following Aurm down the Mountain, and that the blizzard had calmed into a stiff, snowy breeze. Suddenly she shivered, and wrapped her arms around herself as the cold came creeping through her damp winter garments.

“We’re almost there now,” said Aurm. “Look, you can see the woodcutter’s hut from here.”

He pointed up ahead and the child saw that they had come to the edge of a small rise that sat above a large, snow covered clearing. The scene lay quiet and still, nearly devoid of any sign of life except for a thick column of smoke that streamed steadily from a single, solitary hut.

“You’re going to have to go the rest of the way yourself,” Aurm said. “This is as far as I can go.”

“Why?” asked the child. She turned to look at him.

The boy shrugged. “Father won’t tell me, but they once brought me here and made me promise to not go any further than this spot right here.”

She huddled deeper into her clothes as the breeze picked up for a brief moment.

“It’s okay,” she said. “I can go the rest of the way from here.”

“I know you can,” he assured. “I’ll watch from here to make sure you do.”

“Okay,” she said, then started making her way down towards the clearing. “Good bye.”

“Good bye.”

The child walked a few more steps before she turned, and waved.

“Thanks for saving me!”

He waved back, and his face brightened into a smile. “I’m glad I met you!”

“Me too!” she shouted back.

She turned back towards the hut just as its door burst open and the magistrate came running out, followed slowly by the limping woodcutter.

“Daughter!” he cried. “Oh my daughter!”

“Father!” she shouted happily. “I’m here father!”

The magistrate ran toward the child with all the speed he could muster, slipping and stumbling through the snow in his haste, and wrapped her up.

“Oh my daughter,” he sobbed, weeping without shame. “Where have you been? How have you returned to us? I thought surely you had perished. How could I have forgiven myself?”

“It’s okay, father,” the child assured him. She pressed her hands consolingly against his cold cheeks. “I met a friend, father. A boy! He showed me how to get back.”

She turned in her father’s arms to point up at the rise where she had last left her newfound companion, but the boy was nowhere to be seen.

The magistrate brushed the last of the snow from her clothes with compassionate clicks of his tongue. “The fault is mine, my daughter. The fault is mine. What an ordeal you must have endured. We must get you back to the warmth of our home, swiftly and without delay.”

“But he was just there, father,” she insisted. “A boy. His name was...”

She frowned as her mind stumbled across a sudden gap in her memory. She rubbed her mittened hands into her eyes, searching for what once had been, but was interrupted by an enormous yawn. She blinked and swayed in her father’s arms, as a weariness deeper than she had ever known swept over her.

“His name was...”

A disquieting unease crept into a corner of the magistrate’s heart. He placed a gentle hand on her head, and guided it to rest on his shoulder.

“Oh, my sweet daughter. Do not trouble yourself anymore with the memory of the nightmare through which you have so recently passed,” he said soothingly, rocking himself from side to side. “Father’s got you now. Father’s got you now.”

Exhausted, the child fell instantly into a warm, deep, and dreamless sleep.

She would wake the next day in her own bed, bruised but refreshed, with little memory left of her adventure on the Mountain. Given time, even what little she remembered would fade, leaving only the occasional dream of a sudden, strange boy on the Mountain.

But the magistrate, carefully carrying his one love back down to the village in the valley, reflected bitterly upon his actions that had so imperiled his daughter, and vowed before the heavens and the earth never to forgive himself, and never to let such danger even dare to come so near his beloved daughter ever again.