The sea outside was no longer frozen, but the cave itself was filled with slowly melting snow.
“I’ve got a houseplant now,” Tina said. “I feed it strawberries and apricots and then it sings itself to sleep.”
“I saw seven thousand seven hundred and sixty eight spiders,” Ethel said. “All at once!”
“Well, I died and went to hell!” Claire said gleefully. “For a whole afternoon.”
“I chopped the head off a dragon!” Daniel said.
“You did not!” Claire said.
“I did,” Daniel insisted. “And then I chopped it off again when it grew back, and then I ran away.”
“I don’t believe that at all,” Claire said. “If you’d done all that we’d know. There’d be stories about it and everything. You’re just making things up to impress Dad.”
“I’m not,” Daniel said. “It really happened. But no one saw.”
It had been a long time since Antoine had had any guests. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was supposed to say. Eventually he noticed the children had all gone quiet. In the silence of the moment the only sounds were the crackles of the fire and the crabs clacking their claws in anger at the snow. Breath and smoke mingled and rose up into the dark.
“Winter lasts forever and then all of a sudden it’s gone,” he said eventually. His children looked at him in a way which made him doubt whether he was even there.
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Notes:
1. Written on June 8th, 2021
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