Winter Wish

2

First Snow

That winter, when the first snow knocked on their door in November, Luna didn't feel happy, even though she normally loves winter.

She wasn't ready for winter yet.

She had other plans for the first snow.

There is a legend that if you declare your love to the person you love when the first snow falls, you will never be rejected and your love will be eternal.

She had dreamed of this since she was a child, but it had become a habit to hold on to this wish most of all in recent years. Because she was getting old.

The word made her grimace just thinking about it.

She was just shy of 24 and, as one of the few bachelors among her peers, she was feeling increasingly desperate.

Her parents tried not to push her to get married and not to let on that they were getting more and more desperate, but it wasn't hard to guess what they were thinking.

Luna Fulgor was the only unmarried girl in a family of 11 - not counting Albin, the youngest. She was getting older, and with every day that passed, it became less likely that she would marry, and she would become a burden on her family.

None of them would say that to her face. Maybe her family didn't even think that way, but she wanted to pity herself by thinking negatively because she was unhappy.

Actually, she wasn't interested in getting married. If you ask her, she didn't even feel that she was getting old. Yes, she was about to turn 24, but she didn't feel the slightest sign of the negative effects of that. So no matter what people thought or said, she didn't want to meet a man and get married as soon as possible.

Luna wanted to fall in love.

She took a deep breath as her eyes fell on the snowflake floating into her palm. How beautiful it was! But its life was too short. It only had a few more seconds before it melted and disappeared under the warmth of her hand. Then it would disappear.

As she crushed the snowflake with the tip of her finger and wet her hand, she turned her eyes sadly to the sky and tried her best not to cry under the beauty of the falling snow.

She really wanted to fall in love.

Luna had always been the girl who dreamed that she would meet a man and her life would change. She had always believed that she would meet a man who would understand and admire everything that went on in her heart, the strange ideas that flooded her mind and the quirks that made her family laugh at her. She wanted it so badly and believed in it with such strength that she never thought her dream could not come true.

But the years were passing by, and even someone as positive as Luna, and not very much, could have doubts as time passed. Was she wrong? Would she never find the love she was looking for? Were other people right, no matter how she felt?

"Luna, mom is calling you!"

When she heard her brother's voice in the distance, she took action, realizing she was approaching the forest.

As she threw the bag with the firewood on her back and walked back to the house, she sighed to feel the cold deeply and put her usual radiant smile on her face.

No, she couldn't be wrong. The human heart was the most magical mystery to her and somehow Luna thought that her heart could not be wrong.

Somewhere... far away but close... Somewhere there was a man who was just right for her heart. She could feel it. And one day, their paths would cross. And Luna would see that she had been right. Obviously, the time had not yet come.

**

Their humble home was a simple two-story house, spacious but not large enough for them, with two bathrooms and four bedrooms. Luna was only 8 years old when the second floor of the house was built, and after the number of siblings increased, her father and mother agreed between them and slowly built the upstairs by hand over the course of a year. Of course, her mother was pregnant again, so most of the work fell to her father and the older children, but in the end they were able to make their house bigger and more beautiful over time.

The Fulgor family consisted of 11 people. Their mother was not pregnant yet, although there was a secret fear in the hearts of all the older children that this number would increase, a fear that had been a habit for years, but the whole village knew that it was not impossible, given their loving family.

Her parents were best friends who had been together since childhood. They married when their father was 17 and their mother was 15 and decided to build their whole lives together. They made the land their parents had given them a share of their family's land into a small farm and made it their home, making a living from the crops they earned and the animals they raised. Their farm produced the best butter, the fattiest meat and the best eggs in the village. Everyone in the neighborhood knew this. Dozens of people from other villages would visit their farm to shop, and their mother's recipes were loved and repeated by everyone.

Esla and Elliot Fulgor were a happy couple who were very much in love with each other and never cared what people thought. They loved and respected each other since the first time they got married. They were both crowd pleasers, and so no matter what anyone said, they never had any other thought than to lovingly raise all the children they were blessed with.

Firstly they were blessed with twin sons: Julian and Silas.

Then the beautiful Luna was born, and the family's happiness was doubled with the birth of this sweet baby. Luna had an extraordinary beauty. Her hair, eyebrows and eyelashes were in one of the lightest shades of yellow; her eyes were aqua green and she was the only one in the whole family who had these colors. For this reason, she was cherished by all her siblings as an unattainable angel. No matter what she did to show otherwise, everyone loved her that way.

After Luna, Clara and Marcus were born.

After these two beautiful children, their family grew with new twins, a boy and a girl: Felix and Diana.

Three years after the twins, their brother Fabian was born, and five years after that, after a long enough pause to think that the family was complete, Albin was born. Albin would turn 7 in December, and they were all really happy that their family was so big, but they didn't want to have any more siblings.

After all, almost all of the elders, except Luna, had married and started their own homes. They had a family now, and with the newborn children their family was growing. So the idea of having more siblings made things a bit awkward for them. Fortunately, after the unexpected arrival of Albin, this fearful dream had not yet come true, and even though their parents were still happily married, they had not had another child.

So they lived as a family of 11 in their small but happy home. With each passing day, their family grew, and it was really beautiful, but as the children grew up and got married, the number of people living in that house decreased, and that small but beautiful house became more and more empty, and Esla and Elliot could not help but feel a little bit bitter about the situation.

Still, of course, they were very happy and loving. They had long since accepted that there was an order to life...