Snowfall is expected tonight

That night, the forest seemed like the edge of the world, a place the gods had forgotten to look after. The polar night didn’t just hang there—it pressed down, heavy as a slab of granite. The temperature outside had dropped to minus thirty-two degrees, and the air had become so brittle that it felt as if a loud shout would shatter it into a million sharp shards of ice. My grandfather and I were sitting by the fireplace. The second story had just ended—about a distant love and a girl who vanished. The room smelled of burnt sugar, pine needles, and old leather book bindings. My grandfather—a man over eighty whose face resembled the bark of an ancient oak—suddenly rose heavily. His joints didn’t creak as usual. He moved with a strange, unnerving lightness.

“We’ve been sitting too long, Sasha,” he said dully, looking not at me but deep into the flames. “Our thoughts have grown heavy, like raw lead. I’m going to get some firewood, breathe in the frost. The forest whispers when a man is silent. We need to listen.”

I looked at him anxiously. My grandfather was a strong man, his gray beard covering his chest, his hands still remembering the weight of an axe and an oar—but letting him go out alone on such a night…
“Grandfather, I’ll go. There’s a blizzard starting—visibility is only three steps.”
He just shook his head, and the gesture was beyond argument.
“You stay. You have your whole life ahead to run through the woods in the cold. But I need… to set my watch with eternity.”

He threw on a heavy sheepskin coat, took the old “bat” lantern (though there was electricity in the house, Grandfather recognized only live flame), and went out. The door slammed shut, letting in a stream of frosty vapor that slithered like a snake across the floor and melted at my feet.

I was left alone. The hut was warm, the fireplace crackled, but the coziness had vanished with my grandfather. I went to the window. Through the frost patterns, like ferns of an icy kingdom, I could only see a gray haze. Snow began to fall in flakes—huge as swan’s down, but abrasive as sandpaper. Ten minutes passed. Twenty. The woodpile was only thirty meters from the house, behind the bathhouse. Even the slowest person would have returned three times over.

I felt a cold lump of fear begin to stir inside me. I knew this forest. I knew that in such weather a man could get lost in his own yard. I grabbed a hat, pulled on a jacket, and took my grandfather’s double-barreled shotgun—in these parts, wolves come close to human dwellings in winter, and the cold drives them mad.

Grandfather’s tracks by the doorstep had almost disappeared, dusted over with a fresh layer. But I saw them—they didn’t turn toward the bathhouse. They led straight, confidently, directly into the black wall of the taiga. To where Grandfather had forbidden me to go alone even in summer…

(Grandfather’s Recollection)

When I crossed the threshold, the cold struck me in the chest like an old enemy who had long awaited our meeting. My lungs burned. The snow under my feet crunched so loudly that the sound seemed like a scream. *Khr-r-r… Khr-r-r…*

I was heading for the firewood, but suddenly I caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of my eye. Far off, deep in the clearing, a gleam flashed. Faint, ghostly, as if someone had lit a candle behind frosted glass. But in the polar night, that light was brighter than the sun. It called. It vibrated at the same frequency as what remained of my soul. I didn’t think about the cold: I walked toward that light, plowing through waist-deep snowdrifts. The forest around me came alive with its own hidden life.
To the right, from under a spruce, a white hare darted out. It didn’t flee. It sat on its hind legs, twitched its nose comically, and stared at me with its brown eyes. In them reflected that same ghostly light. It seemed to be pointing the way.

From the branch of an old larch, a snowy owl hooted. It turned its head a hundred and eighty degrees, watching me go. Its claws gripped the icy branch tightly, and it didn’t fly away, even though I passed within a couple of meters.

Then I heard their breathing.
Wolves.
They emerged from the shadows smoothly, like gray phantoms. There were five of them. Huge beasts, their fur covered in hoarfrost, so that they seemed made of silver. I froze, my hand involuntarily reaching for my empty belt—I had no knife. The leader of the pack, a creature with a torn ear, stopped ten paces away. He didn’t growl. He just looked at me. There was no hunger in his eyes. There was… sadness? He tilted his head, as if greeting me, and the pack parted, forming a living corridor. They escorted me like an honor guard leading a condemned man to execution or a king to his throne.

Fear fought with curiosity in my chest. My heart pounded so hard I could feel the beats in my temples. *Boom… Boom… Boom…* I was sweating in that thirty-degree frost, and the sweat instantly turned to ice on my eyebrows.
I remembered my story. That girl. Her portrait, which I had preserved in my memory better than my own face. *“Fac fideli sis fidelis,”* I whispered with cracked lips. “Be faithful to the faithful.” And I walked forward.

A ravine, a frozen stream, fallen cedars… I stopped recognizing the area, though I had lived here for eighty years. The forest changed, warped, becoming a backdrop for some ancient dream.

And suddenly the light ahead became unbearable. Out of the blizzard stepped… her?

She stood in a clearing, surrounded by a radiance that made the snow look blue. She wore that same white dress in which I had last seen her—light, lacy, utterly absurd for an Arctic winter. Her chestnut hair, the very hair that used to shine in the sun like autumn leaves, was now sprinkled with diamond hoarfrost.

She was translucent. Through her shoulder I could see the dark trunks of pines. But her face… her face was alive. Tender. The same as ever.
She came up to me and took my hand.

In that instant, the world turned upside down. I expected the icy touch of death, but instead I was seared by a heat stronger than any campfire I had ever known. It was the warmth of absolute, concentrated love. The ice in my soul, accumulated over decades of loneliness, began to melt rapidly. I grew hot; I unbuttoned the collar of my sheepskin coat. Steam rose from my body like from a spent horse.

“Ivan,” she said. Her voice was like the rustle of leaves in a July forest. “You came. You always come.”

She led me further. The blizzard around us turned into a quiet dance of snowflakes. We emerged at an old hut.
I recognized it. It was the ranger’s hut where Anna had lived with her father when we were young. I thought it had burned down half a century ago. But here it stood—warped logs, windows without glass packed with snow, a collapsed roof. To the rest of the world it was a ruin. To me, a palace.

We went inside. There was no ceiling, only stars watching us through a violet sky. On the floor, amid rubbish and ice, lay fragments of a past life.

The White Figure pointed to an old floorboard.
“There, Ivan. You were supposed to take it.”

I knelt down. My fingers, old and stiff, suddenly regained their dexterity. I pried up the board. Underneath lay a metal tea tin, covered in rust. I opened it. Inside were treasures: dusty books of Silver Age poetry that we used to read aloud. Her diary, wrapped in a decayed shawl. Old photographs in which we—young, foolish, and infinitely happy—smiled from another dimension. And there was a letter. The last letter.

When I found Grandfather, he was sitting in the midst of the ruins of that old hut, which I had never noticed in the forest before. He was alone, but he looked as if he had just been speaking with someone. In his hands was a rusty tin. His face was wet—not from snow, but from tears.

I read that letter later, after we returned. But Grandfather read it there, in the forest, under the watch of wolves and a ghost:

“My Ivan. If this paper reaches your hands, then time has completed its circle. You asked why I left. Why I vanished, leaving you within four walls. Ivan, love is not only presence. Sometimes love is a timely departure, so as not to turn light into shadow. Illness was taking my beauty and my mind, and I wanted you to remember me radiant, not fading. Of course, I loved you all my life, but I understood that sometimes harsh reality is the most terrible thing we have. Your feelings… they were the strongest, and I saw and felt them. I hid this letter here, in our place, knowing that your faithfulness would lead you here. Know this: I was never far away. My everything is in every northern light you see; in every crackle of the fireplace you warm yourself by. You were faithful to me, and that faithfulness is the most precious thing in this cold world. Love does not die. It merely passes into another state—like water turns to ice, and ice to vapor. We will meet when your fire burns down. Until then—live for both of us…”

As soon as Grandfather finished reading, the mystical stillness ended. Nature seemed angry that we had stolen her secret.
Then began true hell:

The wind howled so fiercely that my ears plugged. The walls of the old hut shook. Snow fell with such force that I couldn’t see my own outstretched hand.
Anna’s figure began to fade. She dissolved, becoming part of the blizzard.
“Farewell, Ivan!” her voice came through the roar of the storm. “Now you are free!”

Grandfather fell. The warmth of love that had sustained him left with the ghost. In an instant, the frost seized his limbs. He lay in the snow, pressing the letter to his chest, his breathing growing shallower.

At that moment I burst into the hut.
“Grandfather!” I shouted, trying to be heard over the wind. “Grandfather, get up!”
I saw him—a tiny, hunched old man in the vast cold. I ran to him, grabbed his shoulders. His skin was white as chalk.
“Go away, Sasha…” he whispered. “Leave me here. I’m… fine here.”
“Never!” I threw his arm over my shoulder.

It was a journey into the underworld, only icy. I dragged Grandfather, sinking into snowdrifts. The shotgun got in the way, banging painfully against my back. Snow plastered my eyes, my eyelashes froze together. I walked by feel, guided only by some inner compass.

To our right, the wolves reappeared. They ran alongside us in wide bounds, neither approaching nor falling behind. They seemed to cut the wind stream with their bodies, creating a narrow corridor for us. I wasn’t afraid of them. In that moment, I felt that we were all part of one great, harsh northern soul.

“Come on, Grandfather, just a little further!” I yelled, feeling my own strength give out. My legs turned to lead. Every cell in my body begged to just lie down in that soft, welcoming snow and sleep.

But I saw before me the image of that Anna from his stories. If she could preserve that love through decades, could I not carry an old man home?

When the dim yellow light of our hut’s windows appeared ahead, I fell to my knees. I had no strength left. I crawled, dragging Grandfather behind me. The wolves stopped at the forest’s edge. The leader let out a long, drawn-out howl—a farewell salute—and the pack dissolved into the night. We returned from that forest hut as the sky began to take on a strange, ghostly hue—a blend of deep indigo and pre-dawn ash. The snow that had seemed a living, furious enemy in the forest, here at our doorstep, became just snow again. But we both knew: the world had changed.

Grandfather came inside, leaning heavily on my shoulder. His breathing was wheezing, but his face… on it was an expression of such absolute peace as only a person can have who has found a lost treasure after half a century of searching. He didn’t undress immediately. He sat down by the cooling fireplace, carefully, as if it were a holy relic, pressing the letter from the ruins to his chest.

“Go to sleep, Sasha,” he whispered. His voice was dry as an autumn leaf, but it vibrated with strength. “You did more today than just save an old man. You saw the limit. Now you need to find your beginning.”

He lay down on the bed, not letting go of the letter. I watched his eyelids close, and he sank into sleep—deep, healing, filled with visions of that same Anna, whose presence in the forest had saved us both.

But I could not sleep. Adrenaline, fear, and a strange, itching inspiration boiled in my blood. I sat by the window, where the polar night was slowly dying. In front of me lay an album and a stack of pencils. I began to draw.

The pencil glided across the paper with a sound like the whisper of a blizzard. I drew not just what I saw, but what I felt. First, snow-covered spruces emerged on the sheet—the very ones that stood as sentinels in the taiga. They looked like bony fingers of the earth reaching for the sky. Then, the chaos of the blizzard, a whirlwind of white strokes among which one could barely make out the silhouette of my grandfather—stooped but undefeated.

But in the center… in the center I began to draw a portrait. It was a portrait of Grandfather as he had become today: every wrinkle like a riverbed, every hair of his beard like hoarfrost. But I made his eyes different. Into them I poured the light of that ghostly gleam from the forest. That drawing was my confession. In it was all my chaos, all my fear of the future and of that great love about which Grandfather had told stories all those nights.

I looked at my hands—they were trembling. *Grandfather found his letter,* I thought. *He carried his faithfulness through his whole life. But what about me? What will remain of me besides these gray strokes on paper?*

In my mind, the image of Alisa surfaced…

We were in the same school. She taught history, and every time she passed by my classroom, the world paused for a moment. She had dark, almost black hair that fell over her shoulders like a silken waterfall, and eyes the color of strong tea, in which a spark of quiet joy always burned. She looked like that “princess” from Grandfather’s stories—but she was real. She laughed at my jokes, she brought me coffee when I stayed late grading papers. And I… I kept silent. I was that same Julian from the first story, who hid his feelings within the walls of his own fear.

I looked at my sleeping grandfather, at the letter in his hands. And I understood: if I didn’t make a move now, I would forever remain just a shadow in this room.
I took out a blank sheet of paper. My heart began to beat against my ribs like a caged bird. Sweat broke out on my forehead, though the house was cool. This wasn’t just fear—it was a psychological crisis, a moment when the old “self” must die so that something new can be born.

“Dear Alisa…” I wrote, then immediately crumpled the paper. Too formal. Too dry!

I took a second sheet.
“Alisa, I don’t know how to say this…” Again wrong. Too pathetic!

I sat there, staring into the void. Grandfather’s stories raced through my mind. I remembered Julian, who never dared. I remembered Artyom, who lost his Liya in the snow. I felt panic rising in my throat. *What if she laughs at me?* I thought. *What if she comes to school tomorrow and tells everyone what a weirdo I am? What if she just looks at me with pity, and our cozy coffee chats end forever?*

My inner critic screamed: *You’re just a guy, an ordinary guy! You don’t deserve this woman who shines from within! You’re just a shadow of your old grandfather!*

I closed my eyes. Inhale. Exhale. In the silence of the house, I heard my grandfather’s steady breathing. It sounded like the surf. I imagined that white figure in the forest. She wasn’t afraid to disappear. She was afraid of not being heard.

I picked up the pen again. This time I didn’t think. I let the words flow like molten wax.

“Alisa, I am writing this at night, when the world around seems infinite and white. I have just returned from a place where time has no meaning, and I understood one thing: the most terrible thing is the silence we choose ourselves. You are not just a friend or something else to me. You are the light that makes me draw when I have no strength left. Your smile matters to me more than all the Arctic sunrises. You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and that beauty is not in your features, but in the way you look at this world. You are like the first snow in the sun’s rays—dazzling and pure. I love you. I have loved you for so long that this feeling has become part of my breath…”

Each sentence burned my fingers. When I wrote “I love you,” I felt a tear roll down my cheek. It wasn’t a tear of pain, but of enormous relief. It was as if I had cut a huge stone from my chest, a stone I had been carrying for years. Euphoria washed over me. I wanted to shout, run, sing.

But then came the cold. Doubts. *This is too pompous. Too open. She’ll be frightened by such intensity.* I reached to crumple the paper again, but my hand stopped. I looked at Grandfather. He was smiling in his sleep. I folded the letter into four. I put it in an envelope. My hands trembled so much I could barely fit it into the slit. I didn’t wait for morning. If I waited for dawn, I would change my mind. I would burn up in my own analysis and become a shadow again.

I dashed out of the house. The frost immediately sank its icy claws into my cheeks, but I didn’t feel it. A fire raged inside me.

I ran through the sleeping town. The snow crunched under my feet, and the sound seemed like applause. I raced past closed shops, past sleeping five-story buildings, past empty playgrounds covered in a white blanket. My lungs burned from the cold air, but I felt more alive than ever.

The beauty lived in the next block. An old brick house, its windows now dark and silent. I approached her entrance. My fervor suddenly evaporated, replaced by icy dread. *What am I doing? Three in the morning…*

I entered the stairwell. It smelled of old paint and warmth. I climbed to her floor. Door number forty-two. I stood in front of it, pressing my forehead against the cold metal. I could hear my heart beating—*boom-boom, boom-boom.*

I took out the letter. My hand hovered over the mailbox, but I changed my mind. No, this needed to be more reliable. I pressed the doorbell—short, barely a touch. Silence. My heart sank. I pressed again.

Footsteps sounded behind the door. Sleepy, heavy.
“Who’s there?” a woman’s voice said. It was her mother, Margarita Stepanovna.
I froze. A flush covered my face. *God, I’m going to die of shame right now.*
“It’s… it’s Sasha… Alisa’s friend…”
The lock clicked. The door opened a crack on the chain. The surprised eyes of an elderly woman in a housecoat looked at me.
“Sasha? What happened? Has something important happened?”
“No, no!” I stammered, feeling like a complete idiot. “Everything’s fine. Just… give this to her. Please. Tomorrow. When she wakes up. It’s very important. Please!”

I practically shoved the envelope into her hands, turned, and bolted down the stairs. I ran as if all the demons of the North were chasing me. I burst outside, gulping the frosty air, and didn’t stop until three blocks away.

I had done it. I had taken a step. There was no turning back…

I returned home as the sky in the east began to lighten, turning soft pink and gold. It was that “quiet dawn” that Grandfather always called the time of truth.

The house smelled of food. Grandfather stood by the stove, wearing an old cardigan. He was frying eggs, and that everyday sound—the sizzle of oil—seemed the most beautiful symphony in the world.

“You went for a walk,” he said, not a question but a statement, without turning around.
“Yes, Grandfather. I… I delivered the letter.”
Grandfather turned. He looked very old, almost translucent in the morning sunlight, but his smile was so bright it seemed it could warm the whole forest.
“Love and feelings—that’s a step, son,” he said quietly. “Most people spend their whole lives standing at the threshold, afraid of a draft. But you opened the door. Sit down, eat. You need your strength.”

We ate in silence. It was an amazing meal. We didn’t discuss the night’s adventures, didn’t talk about ghosts. We talked about simple things: fixing the porch in spring, the new easels soon arriving at school. But beneath this layer of ordinariness flowed a deep, calm river of understanding.

“You know, Sasha,” Grandfather said, setting down his mug of tea. “Today I saw Anna. Not the one in the forest. The real one. She told me I did everything right. That the cycle is closed. Now it’s your turn to build walls that are not a cage but a home.”

I looked at him and felt a sharp, aching tenderness. I understood that this man was my chief mentor, my lighthouse. And that lighthouse was beginning to slowly fade.

Suddenly my phone on the table vibrated. My heart did a somersault.
A message. From Alisa.
“Come outside. I’m at your house.”

I jumped up, knocking over a chair. Grandfather nodded at me:
“Run. Run before the sun rises too high.”

I flew out onto the porch. She was standing there. In a blue coat, with disheveled hair, flushed from running fast and the cold. In her hand was my letter. It was crumpled—she must have read it more than once.

We looked at each other for about ten seconds. The whole world around—the snow, the houses, the mountains—ceased to exist.
“You’re a fool, Sasha,” she whispered, and her eyes were full of tears. “Why did it take you so long? You could see…”

She rushed at me. I caught her, spun her around in a cloud of snow dust. She hugged me so tightly that I lost my breath. And we kissed. It was a triumph. It was catharsis. Her lips were cold on the outside and searingly hot inside. In that kiss was all the bitterness of my fears and all the sweetness of her waiting.

We stood in the middle of the snowy yard, under the rays of the first real sun, and I felt that spring had finally arrived inside me.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” she whispered into my neck. “Every day, waiting.”

I looked back at the house. Grandfather stood on the porch, leaning on the railing. He was far away, but I could see his smile. He raised his hand, blessing us, then slowly, very slowly, turned and went inside.

Alisa and I walked along the shore of the bay for a long time. We talked about everything under the sun, laughed, made plans. I felt as if I had grown wings.

When I returned home, the sun was already high. The house was unusually quiet. The fireplace had almost burned out; only a couple of red coals still glowed in its depths, like the last sparks of a passing era. I went into Grandfather’s room. He lay on the bed, neatly covered with a blanket. His hands were folded on his chest, and in them he still clutched that yellowed letter from Anna.

I stepped closer, my breath catching.
“Grandfather?” I called softly.

There was no answer. Grandfather’s face was smooth. All the wrinkles that spoke of pain and long waiting had disappeared. On his lips lingered a light, barely noticeable smile—the smile of a man who had fulfilled his mission and gone to a meeting he had waited for his whole life.

The psychology of his passing was so peaceful that I felt no urge to weep from grief. This was not death as tragedy. It was death as the completion of a great symphony. He left quietly, like a dying fire, having given all his warmth to me. I sat on the edge of the bed. I took his cold, dry hand. All the stories flashed through my mind…

I looked at Anna’s letter in his hands. I knew that now they were together. There, where there are no polar nights, where you don’t have to wait months for letters, where love is not a struggle for survival but simply the air they breathe.

“Thank you, Grandfather,” I whispered. “Thank you for teaching me not to be afraid to be real.”

I went out into the living room. The fireplace had gone out completely. But bright, golden sunlight streamed through the window. I went to the easel, picked up a pencil, and on a clean sheet drew a single line. The line of the horizon, where sky meets earth. Grandfather had taught me the most important thing: love is not what we receive—it is what we dare to give, even when we are afraid. And now that his fire had burned down, I knew: mine was only just beginning to blaze.

Outside the window, the forest shone in the winter sun. Life continued. And in every crunch of snow, in every gust of wind, I now heard not a cry of loneliness, but the whisper of eternal, indestructible faithfulness.

EPILOGUE

Many years later, when I have a son, and then a grandson, I will sit them down by this same fireplace. I will take out the yellowed envelope and the drawing of the old man with the shining eyes. I will look at Alisa, who will be sitting beside me, adjusting her gray but still beautiful hair.

And I will begin my story.
“Listen, children… There once was a man within four walls…”

The cycle will never end. Because as long as we love, winter is just a time to warm each other.

THE END…