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It was still snowing.
The snow hadn’t stopped falling in days, a thick white blanket that made the town look quiet even when it wasn’t.
Dawn walked toward the school with her little boots sinking into the snow, watching her breath disappear into the cold air. Normally, at that point of the path, Zeke would be waiting for her on the fallen log, brushing the snow off his old hat. But that day, just like the ones before, he wasn’t there.
School was even worse, because Zeke didn’t enter the classroom alone anymore. He walked in with an entourage.
Five or six kids who used to ignore him, now glued to him like hungry summer mosquitoes. They asked him questions nonstop. Followed him to recess. Offered him trading cards, seats, even Christmas cookies.
Everyone wanted to be near the boy who had walked into the snowy woods and come back holding Dawn’s hand.
And Dawn watched them from her desk, silent, her hands resting on her lap. She didn’t fully understand what she was feeling, but it was strong, like a warm little pebble stuck under her ribs. Not quite pain. Not quite anger. Something in between, uncomfortable and constant.
Zeke looked for her sometimes. Just a second among all the voices. He’d smile at her, clumsy and sweet, but before she could raise her hand to wave back, one of the boys would pull him away.
And he let himself be pulled, because Zeke never knew how to say no.
When Dawn came home that afternoon, she placed her scarf on the chair and stood still, staring out the window at the white field. Her mom was preparing tea and glanced at her sideways.
“Dawn, sweetheart, what’s wrong? You’re very quiet today.”
Dawn took her time answering. “My energy feels tight… here.” She pressed her palm to her chest.
Her mother put the spoon down. “Tight how?”
“Like something wants to come out, but… I don’t know what it is.”
The woman approached, crouched to meet her eye level, and brushed a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Is this about Zeke?”
Dawn lowered her gaze.
“No… yes… I don’t know.”
And it was true. She couldn’t explain it. She only knew Zeke had been hers before.
Her friend, the person she spent almost all her free time with, who walked to school with her, who made snowmen with her in winter and helped her pick flowers in spring.
And now everyone seemed to want a piece of him.
Her mother, who was clearly more emotionally educated than her daughter, smiled with patient understanding.
“When we miss someone, sometimes we have to remind them that we’re still here.”
Dawn blinked. “How?”
The woman pretended to think it over while handing her a cup of tea.
“You could make him a gift. Something yours. Something special. Gifts help connect people.”
Dawn thought about it for a long time. She started drinking the tea without noticing, and finished it before finally speaking.
“He needs a hat.”
Her mother raised an eyebrow.
“A hat?”
“Yes. His is torn. Because of me. He helped me and… and I want him to be warm this winter.”
That was only half the truth. The other half was that she wanted to give him something no other kid could.
Her mother brought out a box of yarn and knitting needles.
“We can make one together.”
The hat was going to be turquoise.
Dawn said it represented his “newborn bravery” and how his aura had changed. Her mother knitted the difficult parts, but Dawn insisted on doing most of it herself. It was hard. Some parts were crooked, other sections unraveled entirely, and sometimes the yarn slipped from her tiny fingers, but she tried again and again with a focus that was almost intimidating.
Every afternoon she placed it on the table.
Every afternoon she added a few more rows.
Every afternoon she stared out the window as if Zeke might appear between the falling snowflakes.
At school, the week moved along in the same strange way. At recess, the other kids crowded around Zeke. One asked him how he had found Dawn. Another claimed Zeke had fought “a giant shadow.” Even though he denied it, confused, they kept praising him.
Dawn approached him twice.
Both times, someone beat her to him.
A hand pulling Zeke toward the field.
Another inviting him to see a drawing.
Another showing off a brand-new flashlight.
She stayed there, quiet and small, hands clasped together, watching him say “be right back” and disappear into laughter that didn’t belong to her.
That little pebble in her chest grew heavier.
At home, her mother started noticing how Dawn pressed her lips together while she knitted.
“How’s the hat coming along?”
“Good.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes… It has to be perfect.”
Her mother smiled. Perfect was impossible; this was Dawn’s first time knitting, after all. But the dedication was something else. Her daughter was determined, and that made her happy.
One night, Dawn rested the half-finished hat on her lap and whispered:
“When I’m done, Zeke will remember me.”
Her mother placed a gentle hand on her back.
“He already remembers you, sweetheart.”
“Not like before.”
And her mother didn’t ask anything else.
The final stitch was done on Friday afternoon.
The pom-pom was huge, round, and crooked.
And along the edge, Dawn embroidered a small uneven symbol she said was for “spiritual protection.”
She stared at it in silence for a long time.
Then she placed it inside a little cloth bag she had decorated with tiny stars.
And she stood up with the most serious expression a six-year-old could possibly make.
“I must see him before the others arrive.”
Her mother lifted her head from the kitchen.
“And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to find him very early.”
“My, my… Want me to come with you?”
“No. It’s something I must do alone.”
The next morning, Dawn left the house when the sky was still a pale violet. Snow was falling softly, as if it were trying to fall asleep. She walked quickly along the path to school, clutching the little cloth bag to her chest as if it were a treasure.
The cold air bit at her nose, but she didn’t care. She had a goal.
She had a little hat.
And she had something to say to Zeke before that loud group could take him away again.
Turning the corner, she saw him.
Zeke was alone for the first time in days, walking with his torn hat tilted to one side and his hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie. He had that awkward expression he always wore when he was thinking too hard.
Dawn squeezed the bag tighter.
She walked straight toward him, without hesitation, with a serious expression, determined to finally spit out the stone that had settled in her stomach. Zeke saw her coming and lit up entirely, as if someone had switched on a lantern inside him.
“Dawn!” he waved, thrilled. “I’m so glad to see you! I was just going to… well… go meet the others to play before class starts. Do you wanna come? They said they’re gonna build a snow ramp and—”
His sentence died when he saw her lips press together.
Dawn stopped in front of him, perfectly still, holding the cloth bag against her chest as if it were evidence.
“Zeke… I haven’t played with you at all this week.”
Zeke shrank a little, like someone had tossed a pillow at his face.
“I… I know. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. It’s just… they call me all the time, and I… and I don’t know, it feels mean to say no, and I thought maybe you wanted to come too, but then I didn’t see you and…”
Dawn puffed her cheeks. A pout, one of those capable of moving mountains.
“I don’t want to play with them.”
Zeke blinked.
“You… don’t?”
She shook her head, small but firm.
“I don’t want to be with other kids. I only want to be with you.”
And then, quieter, poking a finger into his chest:
“And I want you to be only with me.”
Zeke died a little right there.
“I… Dawn…” he muttered, scratching the back of his neck like a very confused puppy. “I’m sorry. Really. I… I missed you a lot. I mean it.”
She didn’t answer. She just opened the cloth bag.
“Then… take this.”
She pulled out the hat. The giant little pom-pom trembled in the wind. Zeke stared at it—first surprised, then moved, then like she had just handed him a shooting star.
“It’s for me?”
“I made it,” Dawn said, puffing her chest. “With Mom’s help. And it has a symbol so you’ll always be protected, and so that… so that you don’t forget me.”
She put the hat on him herself, standing on her tiptoes to fix the edges with ritual-like care.
When she finished, she declared in a solemn voice:
“From this moment on, Zeke, I name you my Spiritual Knight.”
Zeke almost fell over backward.
“Your… what?”
“My Spiritual Knight. It means you have to walk with me, play with me, and your aura can’t mix too much with other kids or you’ll become unbalanced.”
Zeke bit back a laugh, but the part about “being with her” made him genuinely happy.
“Then… yeah. Yes, I accept being your… whatever that is. Your knight, eh.”
She clicked her tongue, satisfied.
“Good. First rule: today you’re not playing with anyone else.”
He hesitated for half a second.
Then he smiled.
“Good eh. I don’t even like them that much anyway.”
The pout vanished from Dawn’s face, replaced by the sweetest smile in the hemisphere. And before he could react, she leaned in and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
Zeke froze.
Red.
Ridiculously red.
“D-Dawn… don’t—don’t do that… I… I get dizzy…”
She laughed, delighted.
“You’re funny.”
Snow up to their ankles.
A huge pine dripping frost.
Two small figures laughing.
The snowman was crooked, with a knotted scarf and uneven pebble eyes. Zeke had picked a branch way too big for its arm.
Dawn wore Zeke’s old hat.
It was huge on her, covering half her face, making her look like a little holiday mushroom.
Zeke wore the new hat with absolute pride, as if it were a magical helmet given to him in a secret ceremony.
“Look,” Dawn said, clasping her hands with satisfaction. “The snowman is finished.”
Zeke nodded, pushing the pom-pom a bit so it wouldn’t cover his eye.
“It looks amazing!”
A cold gust of wind swept between the trees. Dawn stepped closer and took his hand without saying a word. Zeke didn’t let go.
They walked back toward the school, leaving behind the snowman and the tracks that showed they’d been alone, together, far from the noise and the other kids.
Zeke glanced sideways at the girl who now held him as if he were her personal guardian.
Dawn looked at the crooked hat on her head and smiled.
And they kept walking.
A girl who finally had her friend back.
A boy who, for the first time, carried a title that fit him perfectly:
Dawn’s spiritual knight.