Another winter had come. From the window of a compact lower room, Kansas could see the small layer of snow that had accumulated just the night before. Snowflakes danced from the sky, swirling in the wind on their journey from the clouds to the ground. He had always thought that snow was a wonder — he'd read about it a little, astonished to see pictures of what each individual flake looked like, intricate latices of beautifully patterned design. Unbelieving of the pictures, he had carefully watched snow fall on the darker blue stripes of his scarf, and he saw that the book images were not lies. The tiny crystals formed stunning symmetric pattens, barely even visible to his naked eyes. Yet, snowflakes were destined to pile into drifts of white, where their miniature beauty could no longer be found. The only purpose for the original pattern of the individual flakes was to astonish and mystify those who discovered it, as far as the Sadira boy could tell. Nature was a strange, wonderful thing.
Another idea that he had read of in his books was the reason he was in this underused room of the Manor. Apparently, humans had come up with a way to forever preserve the flowers of spring and summer by hanging them to dry. It was a great gift idea, far better than a bouquet that would eventually wilt and rot. He had spent some of the warmer months gathering flowers from human gardens, plots of land cultivated for beauty alone. Many of the houses in Halifax were consumed by the gardens their human residents had left behind. That meant a plethora of flowers to choose from. He carefully selected roses, bluebells, and pansies and grouped them with the wildflowers of Nova Scotia's fields, hanging them upturned in the window sill of this very room. He carefully touched the petals as he watched the snow fall, happy to feel their fragile, dry texture. They were ready. Kansas grinned and energetically grabbed a crystal vase from the floor. He spent the next half hour gingerly taking the flowers down and arranging them in the vase, despaired to lose a few of the weaker petals in the process. Still, the finished product was pretty. Though the colors were duller than before the petals' drying, the washed-out hues were still soft and lovely.
Kansas stood back, crossing his arms as he gazed at what he had made, and hoping that she would like it.