Snowbound Vigil

He crouches close to the ground, mittens burning with cold as he cups a small pillar of snow into shape. The cabin hums behind him, its windows breathing amber, the string lights clicking faintly in the wind like a restrained hymn. On the roof, the question scrawled in snow—Where Vojta?—leans toward the stars, unfinished, as if the night itself hesitates to answer. Beyond the porch, embers mutter inside a ring of stone, their low crackle braiding with the hush of falling frost and the distant, nearly lost pulse of a valley far below. A second figure pauses in the doorway glow, watching, believing in warmth, while the kneeling one tends this small ritual outside, midway between shelter and exposure. Faith takes two forms here: the fire kept alive, and the name kept visible. The snow listens, the mountains keep counsel, and by morning the question will still stand, because Vojta has not returned.