I thought I saw an unfamiliar shadow

Among the ones I so clearly know

It was seven years and a day today. That long since the frost had taken her brother away, that long since he had left them alone. The family was tired and quiet without him. The laughter had gone- drowned to a murky death bed of snow and ice, just like her brother. With her brother.

Neveah Frost had long ago realised that her brother was not coming back, that the desolate lake so often drenched in his laughter would remain cold and grey.

The next summer men had gone out on canoes. With long poles, they had tried to steal his body from the murky water, wishing a proper burial for the boy who had so valiantly sacrificed his own life for hers. They never found him.

She'd slept with her candle unlit since the day he died. He'd always told her the thing was silly, that there wasn't a haunt in the night that could harm her with him around. But now there was someone she wanted to see, and with the innocence only a child could bear she'd thought the light would scare her brother away.

Innocence had melted away as it tends to do, and fantastic things had faded from her peripheral vision with it.

One night a year ago, she had found a web of frost on her window. It was spun like silk in a pattern that reminded her of ripples. Holding onto her child's hope, she had scratched out a message in the spiraling frost.

'Wake me if you're out there...'

It had gone unanswered, but she never noticed how the one tear that she let fall that day had struck the earth. How it froze in summer, or how it sparkled like diamonds.

This day, she went to the lake for the first time since her brother's death.

It was surreal in it's normalcy. The blue water wasn't stained red- it justed lapped at the sands around it with a child's innocence. Like her brother, the tragedy was drowned in all but memory.
"After all this time, I can't help but still believe you're out there..." She was draped by the swaying shadow of a weeping willow, splays of light and dark chasing each other over pale skin.
And then the grave disguised as a pond began to ripple and sway. Frost gathered near the core, near where Jack had fell, and began to spiral outward. It crept over the water with gentle hands, freezing little ripples in time.
Light as a breath of wind, a boy landed atop the diamond ice. Grinning, he gathered a snowball in one hand and chucked it jauntingly over his shoulder at a patch of still-liquid water. It hit, melded into a slash of moving ice, and began to crawl outwards. First a star, then the glimmering picture of a frozen snowflake formed on steady pondwater.

Grinning under brilliant blue eyes, the boy began to spin. Dancing on water, each footstep caused a new icy stepping stone to form. A shepherd-esk staff was whipped around, wood growing white with frost.

From that blossoming frost came diomonds in the night, little white flakes that sparkled just as much as the flickering stars so far above them. Shining in the faint moonlight, the snow grew and billowed outwards, and it wasn't long until she and the land around her was blanketed in glimmering white.

She knew this boy, years past forever couldn't make her forget him. Couldn't make her forget the grin or the lazy grace, the sparkle in eyes now a bright sapphire fit to rival starlight.

She gulped- terrified. If she moved, would he be gone? The fragment of a childhood dream she'd refused to leave behind? Would he flee from her?

But she wanted to talk to him so- and with a clench of smooth fists she stole herself to step forward.

She never had the chance. He was gone, just as flawlessly as he had came.

She was alone. But still she wasn't, a child's heart still beat within her. The fates had answered a child's dream, if but once, and now...

Now maybe she could move on.

Looking at a rock nearby, she knelt. With a chilled finger she traced letters in the fading frost.

'Never forgotten, never gone.'

A smile ghosted upon a damped face.