Master told me to write about snow. I don’t understand what he wants. Snow falls from the sky. When it melts it turns into water. It’s cold. It hurts your eyes when the wind blows it into your face. It’s white until someone walks on it. It only comes in winter and then only stays a few weeks before it melts. The snow seems to like the mountaintop since it stays on them for months and on the tallest it can stay all year.

I remember as a child I use to like making balls out of snow and then throwing then at the other boys. Except for making balls, snow seems to be mostly work. I have to shovel it off of the walkways and from the ramparts at the top of the tower. It also means that I have to chop more wood for the fire and spend more time drying clothes.

Last week the snow almost killed a young woman who was knocked down outside of our house. I wonder how many people die each winter because of the snow? I bet it hurts a lot to have the snow steal all of our heat – I know it hurts my fingers.

I’ve tried to look at snowflakes. They seem to be very detailed – with such fine detail I can’t even make out all the detail. I wonder how such detail can be built into each one.

Maybe that’s what Master wants me to see. There is so much detail in one snowflake – more detail than I can see, and more than I draw. If there is that much detail in a flake that is smaller than the tip of my little finger, how much more detail is there is everything else around me.

A snowflake is a reminder that life is detailed and I shouldn’t look over things too quickly.