He didn't dare to sleep. Of course he went through the motions of intending to sleep, laying out his bed roll and covering himself carefully with his blanket. But this was him making a bid for normalcy, at best.
He expected that the turn of the year would be difficult. He didn't know dates very well, beyond Moomin's birthday, but he could feel himself becoming alert, on edge. He couldn't help but occasionally reflect that his difficulty in tracking dates may have been part of why the turn of the year had become so difficult. If he had just counted his weeks correctly in the first place...
He sighed and pulled his blanket tighter. His own body heat warmed the tent quickly enough, but the sense of security helped.
He had slept mostly normally during the meandering trip down to Vantaa, though perhaps this could have been explained by thoroughly exhausting himself and having more to think about. Traveling kept him alert. One couldn't exactly let their guard down in a new place. But he had risked going somewhere familiar. Somewhere he had learned was safe, and other places that he had made safe. He pulled his blanket tightly around himself and stared at the canvas of his tent with great determination.
Sleep came anyway.
═ ☼ ═ ☼ ═ ☼ ═
After everything had subsided, he had simply laid there. The day went on without him, as it had every day that preceding week. Now, however, instead of a sense of familiarity, Snufkin felt as if the day moved on in spite of him.
It was gone. She was gone. He had seen her, very briefly, at the end. She looked like him.
He had suspected something was wrong the night previous, long before anything had become unavoidably clear. He'd gone to bed early hoping that whatever had come over him could be slept off. He'd woken up in the middle of the night, scrambling for the rags that Moominmamma had given him and that he hadn't used in months. Hadn't needed to.
The bundle of rags had sat on the ground beside him until the daylight began to fade. He stared at it for a very long time, though he didn't dare to touch it. He had to do something. The ground was frozen. It still felt like the correct option.
How many times had he relived this moment, where he had waited for the sun to set so he could try to bring all of this to a close? To hide her away and move on?
Something was different now. He knew what was happening. He knew he was dreaming, though it didn't relieve him of the sense of trepidation as he reached for the bundle and carefully lifted the fabric.
It was empty.
═ ☼ ═ ☼ ═ ☼ ═
He sat up.
The only light was the moon and as he waited for his eyes to adjust, he began to pick out details. The ground underneath him was pebbly and completely bereft of grass. He faintly smelled orange peels where he had shoved them into the pockets of his backpack to dispose of later. It was well past sunset. He was not in the forest in Keimola. He had left the Fillyjonk's house with the oranges and candies she purchased for Little Christmas.
It had been a year.
He lifted himself off of his bedroll, noting how much pain he was not in, wrapping himself in the blanket again and opening the tent flap. The cold slipped into the tent but he ignored it. He peered into the distance, facing what he thought to be southeast, in the general direction that he knew Keimola lay. The sheen of frost on the dirt crackled under his boots as he stood.
The ground had been frozen last year, too. He remembered chipping at the dirt with a trowel for what felt like an eternity. It had crunched under his paws as he swept it into place, patting it down, feeling it stick to his skin in gravelly chunks as it thawed under his warmth. It was the last of it that he was ever able to give to her.
आप पढ़ रहे हैं
Moss (Crossposted from AO3)
फैनफिक्शनWhen Snufkin returns one spring, Moomin notices that he's become withdrawn and preoccupied. Eventually, Snufkin discloses the loss and they figure out how to regroup and move forward. After a forest fire, mosses are among the first plants to grow. C...
