Page 125 - СКАЗКИ СНЕЖНОГО ЭЛЬФА

‘Is it Spring?’ I asked Snezhik. ‘She’s so thin and weak.
How can she overpower Winter?’
‘Are you sure she is weak?’ Snezhik laughed. ‘It is that
she woke up only the day before. Not powerful enough yet,
not to mention they don’t let her see the sun. Either way,
the sun splinters are going to be a good help in composing a
melody of spring that’ll make Winter give in and go to sleep
in Snow Eternity.’
As for Spring, she was dancing around and around, and
the air was charged with ringing anticipation of delight. It
came into the sleeping trees, warming and stirring them. A
little tit on a branch started to chatter cheerfully, another
one resounded in the depth of the wood and soon all the
small birds in the forest were echoing the song of spring. A
violent gust of Wind arose and tore at the girl’s flowery veil.
The girl hurriedly grabbed its mane and plaited the weight-
less ribbon into it. The Wind swung to the side, stood still
near an old fir-tree and settled down on its branches, com-
pletely softened, amorous and losing its bitter cold.
The Spring shook her hair back from her forehead and
there I caught her eye. Her eyes flashed blue, and at once a
new warmth flowed through my heart and the cold bore-
dom, overtaken due to the Winter, got into melting. If the
Spring is powerful enough to melt down snows and drive
the Winter away to its country, it might as well thaw out the
lump of ice in my chest. All of a sudden, as if she had read
my mind, the Spring smiled with such a warm and radiant,
showing white teeth smile, that the murky clouds couldn’t
help setting free the captured sun, letting it happily kiss the
hoarfrosted top of the Earth and say,
‘Wake up, Mother, Spring is here!’

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