Rick felt the cold on his skin and the little snowflakes on his cheeks, burning like fire when they rested on his face, and the cold air next to his ears that let him feel that his head must have been already like ice. But Rick had to manage it to arrive in this little village. It wasn’t a long way anymore down with his sled and he held Roy more tight in his arms, so he couldn’t fall off the sled.
Rick remembered the lucky memory of his first sledging again and how happy he had felt and how happy he felt now, sharing this moment with somebody else and glad, that the worse memory about his crash with the sled wouldn’t come true. And this memory didn’t come true.
The sled slowly stopped at the end of the hill and just the music that came out
…show more content…
The father looked puzzled at him for a while and put his cup of cocoa back on the table.
“Family unit? You mean family?” the man asked. Rick had to smile for no reason. He liked the word ‘family’ more than ‘family unit’. It didn’t sound so cold and loveless. Rick began to nod.
The man smiled a bit. “My wife had died quiet a while ago. After ... that terrible thing had happened.” Rick looked at him. The woman had died? Was she be released from this village too? The Giver and him never talked about death in Elsewhere, because they never had time for that.
Rick didn’t dare to ask why she had died. This man could feel pain and Rick knew what it meant to feel it. He didn’t want to cause pain for him.
The man sighed a bit. “I think it’s bedtime for you now, Rosemary.” He talked to the little girl next to him, who must have been Rosemary and Rick watched her for a moment. Like Lilly, she protested for being sent to bed in the most interesting moments but then she went into her own room and after Rick had carried Roy to his own bed – this time Roy had just fallen asleep without crying – he went back into the living room and sat down on the couch.
The man sat down on the other couch in front of him and looked at Rick for a