They were people made of ice, carved out of the freezing glaciers and swept into shape by the ceaseless north wind. They had been cold for so long they had forgotten what warmth felt like. They couldn’t remember the feeling of the sun or the glow of a fire.
Their steps were jerky, snow creaking in every muscle and ice cracking in every joint. They lived among the sturdy pines, unshakable as the huge trees. They wandered through the forests with nowhere to go and no place to leave.
They were people of eternal night. The sky faded from grey to black and then back again as they watched from below, ankle-deep in the snow. If they loved anything, they loved the stars. They watched them swirl in celestial waltzes across the inky sky and tried to follow their arching trails through the night. But they were people made of snow. The stars were blazing with fire, untouchable to their icicle fingers.
And so they remained still, quiet, cold, sedentary. They never left their forests or the drifts of snow that had given them life. They inflated their iced-over lungs with air from the north wind and creaked slowly through the rustling crystals of ice. But they watched the stars, and that was enough to give them hope that perhaps the rest of the world was not as cold as their frozen hearts.