Winter did not arrive suddenly that year.
It came like a whisper
First came the wind, colder than usual. Then the days grew strangely shorter, as if the sun were in a hurry to disappear. The animals began to move prematurely, and the forest… the forest held an eerie silence.
But nobody in the village wanted to see him.
Nobody… except her.
Her name was Alma.
He was only 14 years old.
And from a young age, she had learned to observe what others ignored. Not because she was special, but because life had forced her to pay attention.
Her mother had died when she was a child, and her father, consumed by bitterness, was never the same again. Over time, he stopped seeing her as a daughter… and began to treat her as a burden.
“You’re good for nothing,” he would often tell her.
But Alma did not respond.
I was just listening.
And I learned.
That autumn, he noticed something different.
The migratory birds had left weeks earlier. The river flowed less strongly, as if preparing to freeze. Even the air had a different smell.
