Chapter Text
He suddenly wished for a total stop of time. A reverse. So that he could deny what he’d just heard and the situation he’d just been thrown into. He could feel his chest tightening, feel himself already drifting away from the spot where he stood paralyzed. Moomintroll stood opposite, on the other side of the little bridge over the brook which ran by Moominhouse, but he daren’t cross it just now and perhaps that was all the better.
He was still talking, though. "…not entirely my idea, and anyway I didn’t really think it would work—”
Trying to explain himself. He didn’t see. Did he think that the reason he’d done it was going to change the fact he had? Snufkin couldn’t listen anymore. He put up his hands, to shield himself, to stop Moomintroll talking. Talking, talking. What could he say now? Didn’t he know what was happening—what had been broken? What Moomintroll had destroyed with this…this scheme, was far more than the path which led through the mountains. Along with that avalanche he sent crumbling down, something far more fragile and precious fell apart too. And he didn’t see. He didn’t know what he’d done.
Snufkin felt himself strangely out of breath. “I… Moomintroll, that was…” Unacceptable? Cruel? Every word that came to mind seemed too harsh, and he didn’t want to be harsh, he didn’t want…any of this. Snufkin worked hard to control his voice, like always, but it came out trembling anyway. “I… can’t stay for winter. I have to…I thought—you…you said you understood.”
Moomintroll’s blue eyes were beginning to fill with tears. He couldn’t look at them. The sight only made him angrier…panicked. Those tears weren’t his fault. They weren’t. He had to leave, every year, and didn’t Moomintroll trust that he’d be back? Why would he do this, then? There wasn’t anyone Snufkin trusted more than Moomintroll. He had never expected him to…not only to try to force him to stay, but to lie about it. To make up a secret plan and collapse nearly a whole face of the mountain just to keep him here.
“I’m so, so sorry, Snufkin; I never should have gone through with it. I just thought if you—I mean, if the road was blocked, then you wouldn’t be able… A-and maybe you’d just spend one winter here, just one, just to see if you liked it; maybe you would! I…I just—”
Snufkin had to cut him off again. “You just…have so many feelings.” He was already shifting away, his body unconsciously turning toward the road.
“Please, Snufkin, don’t leave it like this. Don’t go, not until we—”
The space between them had shrunk, and he wasn’t sure how long he’d been taking steps back, but Moomin kept stepping forward, kept growing more desperate, kept longing and crying and—and it just wouldn’t “Stop!”
Moomintroll jumped backward as if he’d been stung by a wasp. It took him a moment to register that the sound had come from Snufkin at all. In his entire life, he had never known that soft and gentle voice to shout. Not like that.
Snufkin was frozen in place, staring wide-eyed at the ground, practically gasping for breath. Shaking. Was he scared, or angry? Was there a difference? “Please, stop. I can’t. Moomintroll, I can’t. Don’t you see? Not even if I wanted to. Do you understand?” Moomintroll shut his eyes, and suddenly Snufkin was the one begging for an answer, because he’d never needed one so badly. “Well? Do you!?” he repeated, and, of course, it was far too harsh.
“I don’t!” Moomin cried back, getting angry himself now. He cried openly and shouted as much as he liked. “I don’t understand how you can just—just build things up, and leave it all in my hands when it gets too much for you. And it’s so easy for you to leave, every time! Maybe I wanted it to be harder for once! I don’t understand being afraid that anyone might miss you, or love you—or how you can expect to have what you won’t even give… I don’t think I’ll ever understand that. I don’t ever want to know what that’s like!”
The wind itself lost its vigor, then, dying down to a pitiful whisper. The snow-laden tails of it swirled into strange shapes between them, and both wished that it could sweep away spoken words. Ever. Ever. The weight that fell upon Snufkin then was so soft but so heavy, a snowfall sound, a great silencing realization that something which began in hope could not go further. Ever.
Snufkin felt suddenly very unreal. As if things were all detaching from one another. His own voice sounded like it came from somewhere else, someone else. Like he could just helplessly listen to it, the same as Moomin.
“Yes. Yes, then…here is what we must do.” He spoke very softly, his eyes hidden beneath the brim of his hat. “I’m sorry, Moomintroll, for everything I’ve put you through. You won’t need to do any of it again.”
Moomintroll had never been so scared in his life. “What...what does that…?”
“You don’t need to wait for me anymore.”
Snufkin kept his eyes downward. He didn’t want to look up and see that shattered porcelain face staring at him from across the winter water. He turned away and let his numb feet keep falling in front of one another. Vanishing into the storm, Snufkin willed the sound of the wind to drown out the pitiful voice which called his name, over, and over, and over again.
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The landslide had caused a week-long delay in Snufkin’s departure. Adding in the time he had already stayed to wait for hibernation to start, it was nearly a month into winter when he passed the borders of of Moominvalley. He had no idea how Moomintroll had managed to collapse such a large portion of the main mountain path, but there was no use caring. The mountains had more than one.
Trouble was, they all would take weeks to pass along, except for one. And it was awful. One of the steepest, most poorly-kept, most difficult paths he’d come across in all his travels. It was barely suitable as a game trail for mountain goats, let alone any two-legged creature. Normally, he wouldn’t even think of taking it. But, in the state he found himself now—bitter as the wind and just as empty—Snufkin didn’t hesitate at all. He welcomed it. He hoped most sincerely that it would be quite the miserable climb.
In fact it was. Driven snow obscured the path, if it could even rightly be called a path. Climbing from ledge to ledge in the rock face was the best it got, and at the worst, he had to jump. Hidden ice made a slow hike even slower, and the higher he got, the worse the wind grew. It was perfect. Truly. When you’re in situations like this, you have no choice but to forget about whatever may be on your mind. You have to focus on the physical distress, instead of the kind in your heart. Which is famously much easier to face. There’s nothing like a life-threatening situation to make you forget all about the fact you’ve nothing to live for anymore.
As he reached a wider flat ledge at least half-sheltered from the growing blizzard, he paused to catch his breath in the thin air. As thin as he felt. His kind didn’t fare well in the cold; they weren’t made for it. He’d heard a rumor that Joxters couldn’t even survive very long in low temperatures. Perhaps that’s why there were so few of them. Snufkin had never had very much to thank the Mymble for, but as he plowed through knee-high white powder, he supposed it was all down to her part of his heritage that he wasn’t already frozen dead.
Hours passed, and he earned every inch of progress up the unforgiving slope. He kicked his own footholds into the path with each step and wished he’d brought an ice pick or some other tool. His face was beginning to go numb in the whipping gale as it howled. No matter what direction he went, it seemed to be against him. Fine. Good. It would be quite impossible soon to think of anything except the climb and the storm. The necessities of going on. He had to travel now. There was no choice any more.
It felt so wrong.
Everywhere he’d come and gone to had always been by his whims. There was a time when he had no home at all, or otherwise his home was everywhere. A life of wandering about wherever and never keeping track of time or seasons, remembering little and sleeping much. He had nothing to look forward to and nothing to miss. Was he happy then? Could he be like that again? …He would have to. Only it wouldn’t be his choice this time.
Snufkin felt his chest tighten, his lungs seize. He knelt down on the path and clung to the rock face, trying to get his breath back under his control again. It hurt. What was happening to him? He’d never felt like this before. He was entirely unprepared for the way it crushed him to think that Moominvalley would be closed to him forever. He’d attached himself to a place, to people, but all the while he’d been afraid of just that. And he’d been right. He should have listened to the voice in the back of his mind warning him not to get so fond of anything that he couldn’t be without it. He thought he could find a way, somehow, to enjoy life without consequence. But it wasn’t possible, after all. He had tried, and now he knew for sure: one cannot have both freedom and love. Inevitably, someday, one of the two will consume the other.
This won’t do. Not at all. He had to get over this mountain and find some hole to curl up in, where it would be quite safe enough for his heart to break all it wanted to.
His legs felt unsteady as he rose back to his feet, shivering quite badly. Surely it was the cold making him feel so heavy. It was getting much harder to move. He started back into the climb, but Snufkin began to slip more frequently as the cold stiffened his limbs. Irritation crept over him, though he knew it wasn’t wise to let it. He needed to pay attention now. He had never been so confused. He was lost, perhaps for the first time. Like he was a stranger inside his own mind. For all the distance he crossed, Snufkin would find it quite difficult to outpace a thing like loss. He couldn’t escape it because he created it. Every step strengthened the ache of longing for the very thing he was walking away from. For Ever.
Only it wasn’t a thing, or a place; it was someone. Someone he’d never see or hear or touch ever again, but still never get away from. No matter how many miles he put between them, no matter where he went or didn’t go, this ache would follow. He’d go on seeing round shapes in every snowdrift and never be able to look at the sea under the moon without crying. The clear blue sky would become nothing but a reminder of the color of his eyes.
That was it. One could never outrun love. Snufkin would no longer be free.
The instant that thought broke through, he stumbled, heart leaping with panic. What he’d thought was solid stone collapsed beneath one crucial misplaced step. Snow. It was all made of fragile, ephemeral snow.
The snowdrift crumbled beneath him and there was nothing to hold on to. The world became a blur of white and grey and stars dancing in front of his eyes. Rocks and snow pummeled him into adrenaline-laced confusion. It happened too fast to think. The fall was over before he even figured out which way he was falling.
It must have been a good long while that he lay there at the bottom of the cliff. A three-hour hike undone in as many seconds. He was dazed and lost and could find nothing to do but stare at the grey sky until his vision was no longer blurred. Until he stopped aching—body and heart. Until he stopped imagining Moomintroll sprinting to his side to pick him up, their fight forgotten, everything between them instantly forgiven and resolved in the face of a death scare.
A long while passed before the cold became too much to bear lying in the snow any more. Very slowly, Snufkin dragged his battered body out of the rubble. He carefully tested all parts of himself. His back and ribs were quite sore and his left knee had been twisted, but not so badly that he couldn't move. His head ached. No blood anywhere, though. He was fortunate nothing worse had come of it. He took a moment to tightly wrap the knee with his scarf; there wasn't much else he could do for it just now. He needed to get out of this valley before anything. Regaining his feet, he looked up at the distance he’d dropped from. It was no short fall. He should have felt something about that, he supposed. Or perhaps it was better not to. The only thing now was to forget what had happened, and deal with what was going to happen next.
He approached the side of the cliff, moving mechanically. He could climb it. It wasn’t sheer, it was just steep. Alright. Don’t think—just start. Snufkin dug a paw under the snow and found a purchase, latched on. He began to climb. Began to fail, anyway. He would make it a few feet, lose grip, slide down. It was painful work and he had to do it without the use of one leg. Dirt gathered beneath his nails and small cuts accumulated all along his arms. He wasn’t even making progress. Scrambling, scratching, like some desperate, dumb animal trapped in a dug pit.
Just once. Just over this mountain, just the one more time. He’d never need to do this again, if only he could make it out of the valley. But it wouldn’t let him go. The place itself was trapping him now, trying at the last minute to possess him. And why shouldn’t it!? It knew that if it let him free now, it would never see him again!
This burst of emotion broke through as a desperate scream, which did not ring out over the rocktops, but rather sank into the endless snow and bled out in the wind. And then, wilting, Snufkin slid back down the incline and came to rest at the very bottom. His forehead pressed against the cold stone, he rasped for breath, his lungs burning while his skin froze. It was no use. He couldn’t find any footholds under all the snow and ice. Digging some for himself was useless too; in this awful cold, he couldn’t even see his own paws.
Wait. That’s not it. Shouldn’t it be, he couldn’t feel his paws? He checked again, waving one in front of his face. No, no. He. Definitely couldn’t see it.
Snufkin stared blankly at the ends of his arms, watching his sleeves slowly recede into nothing. He flexed his fingers and found them to still exist, for the pain was still in them, it was only that they’d…well. Yes. Naturally.
It’s happened, then, at last.
Snufkin sat down in the snow. The pale wind made its shapes and screams, and the valley he knew so well began to feel less and less real. It grew farther away until it resembled some distant dream—and himself along with it. As he sat there as still as an old stone, a film of snow gathered on the brim of his hat and along his clothes, and that thin white shape in the frigid air was the only indication that anyone was there at all.