Page 28 - СКАЗКИ СНЕЖНОГО ЭЛЬФА

swer. The girl didn’t move. I stared at her in surprise.
She looked very pale, quite like me as an elf. Her thin
fingers were drawing something on the pane, her eyes
were far away. Her eyes - they were awesome. Have
you ever seen ice, covering a lake of clear water in a
starry night , when the moon is not yet up, but the edge
of its disk has already emerged on the horizon? Her
eyes were like that ice; dark and clear, they kept some
disturbing mystery and reflected glowing stars sliding
on the surface. I stared in her eyes to see only my re-
flection; the girl didn’t see me, her eyes seemed to look
into Eternity. Confused, I flew away to the mountains
where I stayed for a long time, the wind alone howling
about. It was the first time I got interested in a human.
A few days later I was by her window again, only
to see her still sitting plunged into contemplation of
Eternity. I landed on the cornice and knocked on the
window, ready to hear a shriek of a frightened girl. She
bent her head at a start, her brow furrowed in concen-
tration.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked, running her thin fingers
over the pane.
‘It’s me, Snezhel,’ I murmured.
‘Where are you? I don’t sense you.’ The girl anxious-
ly ran her small fingers over the window frame, then
the sill; she even touched the air.
‘Hey, here I am. Don’t you see?’ I felt angry.
‘Sorry, I don’t. I’m blind,’ the girl whispered, tears
welling in her eyes.

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