THE EVERGREEN FIR TREE

Photo by : OGphoto.com

               They both knew, from the first, that their love was impossible and that a day would come when they would have to say good bye. On Christmas Eve they decided that their relationship, as beautiful as an angels’ love story, should end with the dying year. He would have liked to have spent all their days together, but she decided it was better to leave. ""The new year will find us in our new life where we will miss each other" she said, her eyes in tears, while kissing him good bye.
        Her words replayed in his head as he looked through the window of the now empty house, at the traces of her steps getting lost far away, at the edge of the forest, its trees bare and gray and black, so different from the green of summer. He wanted to accompany her to the base of the mountain, where the town began, so that he would know she would be safe. But she did not want him to walk with her. She wanted to leave him without looking behind, remembering him there, in the house of their love. She would always keep that memory in her heart.
        The snowfall was getting harder, deeper, and, as her footprints slowly disappeared under the snow, the fear and worry grew in him. He should not have let her leave, at least not before the snowfall had stopped. “How will she reach the town alone, through all this driving snow growing deeper and colder with every moment?” he thought. “The days are so short, soon evening will fall and she might lose her way in the dark. Alone in that desert of snow where nobody will hear her if she screams or the wolves attack her before she can get out of the forest.” He decided to find her at any cost, and bring her back. If she refused to return with him, then he would go with her to the town. He grabbed a hatchet to defend against the wild animals and started running through the snow following the disappearing traces of her steps into the bare and darkening forest.
        The evening light faded quickly and he soon tired of fighting the cold and snow. Each step became more difficult, more exhausting than the last. His tears froze on his eyelashes, mixing with the relentless blasting of the snow. He was hoping she could find shelter in the clearing on the top of the hill, inside the ruins of the old hut. But there was no sign of her there. Her footprints were now completely wiped away. He fell to his knees screaming desperately, "Don’t go ! Please come back ! I love you !" " His voice woke up the dry fir trees from their numbness and, furious at being disturbed, they scattered all the burden of their branches upon him, covering him with a huge pile of snow. "Good bye, I love you", he thought as the cold cover engulfed him. "
        He woke up later, in daylight, without understanding where he was. He stared at the whiteness for awhile, then recognized the clearing. The snowfall had stopped and his tracks in the snow clearly marked the way he had come. He remembered the snow that had fallen upon him taking his breath away. He could not understand how or why he was still alive, or where that smothering blanket of snow had gone. His clothes were dry and moreover, even the snow that should have been under his body had melted away. Most of all, he could not understand where that fir tree fragrance, sweet, strong and fresh, could come from. He thought he may have entered the delirium of those who die by freezing, because it was not possible for a green fir tree to be there in the middle of the winter.
        There was nothing green in winter, all the world slept or died in the cold. And yet… in the middle of the clearing, just next to the place where he had fallen, a green fir tree had grown from that warm spot of land. He touched it to see whether it was real and the soft whisper of its branches brought from far away the echo of her laughter. Then suddenly he understood that her love had made that fir tree grow there to protect him from the winter frost that would have killed him.
        Feeling that the fir tree was the last memory he would have of her, he decided to take it home and replant it in his garden, right in front of the window where he watched her vanishing traces. Seeing it there at the beginning of each day would be like her telling him "good morning". He would never be alone again with that fir tree, kept evergreen by the same miracle of love that had made it turn green in the middle of winter and saved his life.
        While he was walking through the snow, the fir tree on his shoulder, all the dry, barren fir trees he passed started turning green, filling the forest with their fragrance.
        Since then the fir tree has become the symbolic tree of Christmas. And it stays evergreen so that nobody will ever be alone during the Christmas night.

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