The dining room hums with warmth—not just from the food, but from the easy, unhurried rhythm of conversation that flows like a gentle current beneath the flicker of candlelight.
Mom's voice is the thread that holds everything together. She speaks of Crystal Country's first snow—of how the world goes still and silent when the first flake falls, how the entire city seems to hold its breath, and how families gather as old traditions come alive.
Then she tells him about Dad.
Every year, without fail, he proposed to her on the first snowfall. He would kneel in the cold, his breath curling into the winter air, and offer her a ring again, as though marking time not in years but in winters—each one a new beginning, a promise renewed.
