Let it Snow When It's Cold

There was never enough snow or ice to please the mountain spirit.  It rose up like a ravenous monster whenever the spring came, and submitted like a lamb when the winter reared its magnificent head.  This mountain spirit had no name for itself, but it was affectionately known as "Foti" and "he" by the people who lived at its base and as near its peak as they could manage.

Most of them could only manage to reach a little way up the slope, no more than a two-day journey, but it did please Foti that they tried.

He suspected that they reached so in order to be close to him.  During the windy nights, he could sense their prayers.  Those who shouted, he could even manage to hear, if only a little.  Their voices could not quite pierce the winds, but some of the words were carried up to his peak, woven into the fibres of the stray and wild goats' fur.

One such prayer came to him directly, still trapped tightly behind the lips of a child.  She, or possibly he--Foti could never tell which was the other--rode on the back of one of the goats.  It was a tame thing, the goat.  It carried itself with a steady gait that suggested a life of stubborn comfort.  The child was tall for its set, with hair very like the goat's fur in colour and in coarseness.

Foti blew the winds in their direction, as a form of greeting.  The goat bleated, clearly annoyed, while the child turned up its collar and hid its chin against its chest.

This did not please Foti.  His greeting was being snubbed.  But he was a magnanimous spirit of great age and wisdom.  He could afford to let the snub fall away from him, forgotten.

After travelling up a bit higher, carving a path through the wind as it grew stronger and the lack of path grew steeper, the child and its goat came to a weary stop.  The child slid off the goat's back, patted its head, and then staggered on, occasionally remembering its ancestry and crawling along on all fours.  Foti could feel the slender little fingers gripping the turf.

"It's cold," the little voice said.  It was almost a whisper, but the voice was strong.  "There's nothing so sad as cold with no snow."

It was such a plaintive, odd little cry that Foti would have tilted his head to one side, if he had been in possession of a head.  Instead, he pushed the winds aside.  This gesture, like a shrug from a human, pushed the clouds.  They were sent nudging against one another.

"Couldn't we have just a little more snow?" the child asked, looking up from its grasp on the grass.  "Just so long as it stays cold?"

Foti attempted to wrinkle his nose like a rabbit, but he hadn't one.  Instead, every cloud still in the reach of his influence shook gently, and the requested precipitation began to fall.  He expressed pleasure in his own way, considered it a prayer answered, and curled up to sleep in his mountain.  Just in case he hadn't heard right.  Better to think of a good deed done than to know oneself to be a fool, he thought.

He did not see the child run back to jump on its goat.  He did not see it return to the other children to play and spread the story.