The woollen scarf was actually gone. Wherever Marja looked, whether she looked in or under the shoe rack, whether she followed the way to the library or looked in the library, it was gone. Although Marja was not particularly attached to the garment, she was annoyed about the loss. She didn't lose anything else, not without a trace.

"That's not so bad, Marja," Elona comforted her daughter, which wasn't really necessary and didn't really help Marja. Yet it was reassuring that her mother stroked her hair.

She just nodded as if this scarf was a minor waste of time. "No way, that thing was all scratchy anyway. But don't tell Grandma," she warned Elona, who was only laughing and assumed that Marja wasn't thinking about it either. She didn't either. The next day she made her way to the library to meet Kirka at the same temperatures as the day before.

Now I'm excited! Marja thought to herself when the square building came into her field of vision. She recalled Kirka's words that she would be there whenever Marja came. How was that supposed to work, had she wondered, was she going to spend the whole day in the library?

Marja had looked at the glass door, which was almost blinded by dust and fly droppings, in the hope of recognizing Kirka's pale figure behind it, but it was only Mrs. Schröder, who kept passing by, with books under her arms, which had long since been stowed away on the shelves on the way back and were waiting to be read - something which probably would not happen, since Marja counted herself among the maybe three only people who came by the library every now and then.

"Marja!" She had not expected that the voice did not come from within, but had its source next to the entrance. But it was true. With a beaming smile Kirka had sat down on the white bench next to the library, an open book in her hand, her writing pad lying next to her.

Although Marja was reluctant to sit next to the girl in the cold instead of in the warm library, she gave herself a jolt, smiled and took a seat on the lacquered bench, from whose cold she was fortunately protected by a thin cushion.

Kirka closed the book she was holding in her hand until a moment ago and reached for her block instead.

"Nice of you to drop by so early," she said. "I expected you a little later, but the early bird catches the worm, right?"

What can one add to that? Marja thought and smiled instead of saying something. The question was on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it together with a draught of icy air that made her cough strongly.

"Are you okay?" Kirka asked worriedly, but Marja just nodded and wiped the coughing tears from her eyes, angrily. Calmly Kirka leaned back again and pulled out her writing pad.

"I liked the story about the girl with the woollen scarf," she explained, demonstratively holding out her block to Marja, "so I wrote it down. You see? Maybe I can duplicate it again if you want."

Why don't you take the sheets out of the pad? Marja wanted to ask, but let it go. There was something inside her that told her not to question Kirka's decisions, probably because she had so much respect for the girl through her ability to write.

Kirka took the block again and turned a few pages further. "Of course...", she started as she concentrated on her lip, and her face brightened noticeably when she found what she was looking for, "I also wrote a new story. You want to hear it? Yes? Then tell me what you think at the end."

Marja eagerly listened to the sentences that Kirka began her story with: "There is no man in the world who does not know it as it is now. With green forests and barren deserts. With cohesion and war. With ups and downs. With land and sea and air. But that's not even half the truth, and even if everyone knows it, nobody understands it."

Marja smiled as she noticed her eyelids had closed over her eyes. How profound Kirka's stories were. What secrets they held, secrets that made people think. Yeah, she managed. She felt it. It may be that children could write stories, adults as well. Kirka was certainly one of them.

"And in the end -" For some reason, Kirka's words made her sad. In the end. Like it was all over after that. "- they saw it. They realized that they were not uninvolved in their fate, they woven it like a fine silk cloth that can blow in the wind, which you can wash again, but if you tear it, you know, it will never be as immaculate as before, even if you try to sew it."

Marja nodded. She just nodded. The story had been about a group of hikers who wanted to return to their homeland from which their families had been expelled years before. And this longing had been palpable. Marja had felt as if she had stumbled through an invisible door into the story and landed in the skin of one of the protagonists. Perhaps in that of the silent Santhea. Or the vain Milene. Or the innocent Morgan.

Marja had not even noticed that Mrs. Schröder had been standing and eavesdropping at the tilted window behind them the whole time. When the girl turned to her, she had tears in her eyes that she quickly wiped away when Marja's eyes met hers. Kirka, however, was apparently less impressed by her own work. She crossed out a few words here and there and wrote new ones, deleted sentences and corrected spelling mistakes. "That's the way it should be," she muttered to herself when she finally closed her pad with satisfaction.

"That was a beautiful story," Marja praised, to say something. "Maybe you can copy it?"

"Of course." Kirka winked at her.

"You really are talented, dear," Marja heard Mrs. Schröder's muffled voice behind the window. Confused, Kirka also noticed that not only Marja had listened to her story, then she smiled, albeit a little tormented, as if she had rather groaned. Whether this was due to Mrs. Schröder personally, Marja could not make out at that moment, but she had the feeling anyway that Kirka did not like the librarian very much.

Marja forgot to mention her missing scarf.

The next day Marja came to the library and Kirka sat on the white bench as before and read, but closed her book when she discovered Marja. This time Kirka told about a mermaid who lived somewhere in the North Sea and was unjustly feared by many. She was not like her sisters, who again and again threw the fishermen into disaster with her beguiling singing, she was not one of them. This mermaid didn't know what she was there for, and it wasn't important to her either - until one day she saved a fishing boat from one of her sisters and was outcast from then on. A boy hiding on the boat as a stowaway passenger discovered the mermaid and the two met again a few years later when the boy was twenty years old and was trapped on an island with his boat capsized.

Too figuratively Marja could imagine this touching story, and as always words were capitalized: Friendship, cohesion, adventure. And again Marja felt this unimaginable longing, this pulling in her heart, and she heard the voice whispering to her again and again: "Come with me! We go on a journey! We discover the world and live the adventures Kirka and many other authors write on paper!"

Marja could see the coast. You could see it from all over the island, if you arrived by boat on one side, you could see the beach on the other side if you found a suitable alley between the houses. Fortunately this was only the width of the island, if you looked along the length, you would not see the coast immediately, but you could easily cross it completely in one or two hours. In the past this had been a miserably long hike for Marja, today it seemed ridiculously short to her. This island was just incredibly small.

The tales of the following days also spoke of longing and wanderlust. Two, or had it been three days? Marja forgot about time and everything around her when she listened to Kirka's stories. From time to time Mrs. Schröder could not separate herself from the sentences either, she accidentally picked up a few through the always tilted window above the bench, but Marja usually didn't notice her until Kirka had finished her story.

Sometimes Kirka read two hours in a row, and after Marja said goodbye to her new girlfriend, she once again fetched the carefully folded paper on which Kirka had copied her favourite stories.

Marja was sure that she had not only taken her stories into her heart, but also Kirka herself. Probably her in particular. Even if she barely knew her behind the words, her heart bounced back every day when she set off to the library to see her. Kirka. The honey-blond girl, pale as well as newly fallen snow (which unfortunately was missing on the island until that day), with eyes as cloudy as the winter sun, which sometimes shone through the thin, silk-threaded cloud curtain with mild rays.

At some point Kirka muttered: "Hm... yeah, everybody makes mistakes." Surprised, Marja looked up, trying, after the end of another wonderful story, to let it sink in, to digest it.

"What do you mean?", she wanted to know from her friend, and her curiosity unmistakably shaped her voice. Then Kirka suddenly began to smile and grin, so that Marja saw her white teeth in full splendour, and she replied: "Well, you remember the story about the woollen scarf? The one that might be about you. Yes? Well, how did I put it. "She always wore this red scarf around her neck."

When she still saw Marja's helpless expression on her face, she just grinned even wider. "Well, the emphasis was on the pretty word always - really amazing, wasn't it? Five letters and yet such an expressive word! - but look, you only wore that scarf once. Would I have guessed?"

Marja shook her head timidly, with no expression. Kirka's corners of her mouth then sank down again until the darkness on her face resembled that on Marjas. "Yep, I'm really not a comedian. No reason to put on a face like that, though. Maybe you know a joke that at least makes us smile," she attempted to give Marja more beautiful thoughts.

For her friend's sake, Marja wrested a short smile, although she made a worried look on her face. But she could perhaps actually confess her displeasure to Kirka. So she sighed deeply once and said: "The scarf has disappeared barely an hour after your story came to an end. Oh no, don't worry, it wasn't important to me! Just... how could I lose it? Wouldn't I have noticed?"

Kirka shrugged her shoulders helplessly, and a moment after she said a pondering "yes", Marja thought she was seriously thinking about it, but was taught a better lesson when Kirka added: "Quick as the weasels these robbers are, aren't they?"

She seemed really happy that Marja giggled like the 12-year-old child she actually was. It was always nice to learn more about Kirka's personality, Marja thought. For example, she already knew that she was from Finland. And apparently she was an optimistic, chatty, unconcerned personality. Until the moment even the biggest joker's smile gets stuck in his throat.

"Well?" Kristopher's gaze was both amusement and a tiny hint of mockery, while Marja stroked her winter boots over her feet wrapped in fluffy striped socks. " Are you going back to ... to see your girl of the winter sun?"

"Girl of the winter sun?" Now it was Marja herself, whose voice sounded amused. "Because I compared her eye color to the winter sun? Dad, you do remember every cheesy crap," she threw to her father, as well as a winter jacket. It actually belonged to her mother, but Marja's own was simply not big enough for the girl, who had grown very much in the last year, and good and above all warm jackets could no longer be bought.

"Cheesy" Kristopher repeated, as if it was an important keyword for something that he had absolutely wanted to remember, it had slipped his mind after all. "Why don't you just compare her eyes to goat cheese? It is also as pale yellow..."

"You're a weirdo!", Marja interrupted her father impetuously and opened the door. "And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to visit my 'girl of the winter sun' again."

And during the journey, Marja wondered how many other types of cheese were similar to Kirka's eye colour. Goat's cheese may have been a little too light after all. Or maybe not, she didn't remember exactly. At what point should she pay particular attention to Kirka's eye colour, when she was at the same time putting herself into all kinds of stories?

Kirka sat as usual on the bench, whose cushions would soon have to be replaced, with others who are really isolating. But this time the blonde girl did not slap her book immediately when she heard Marja coming - if she even noticed her. Marja couldn't see the usual concentration on her face when she delved into a story. It was mainly worry that she was seeing. Unsound worry about something that Marja had no idea about. And she knew the expression of concern on a person's face, for her short life she has had to see it far too often.

"Kirka?" In her greeting, a questioning undertone resonated. The girl looked up confused from her book and smiled at Marja - with such a fake and sad smile that it strangled Marja's air.

Kirka quickly and hastily closed her book and put it aside, hiding her hands behind her back, but Marja had nevertheless noticed the trembling. "You're early. Earlier than usual," Kirka said in a thin voice, but Marja shook her head. "That's not true. It's the same time as always."

"Oh!" At least that surprise seemed real. Kirka knocked the bench beside her with the palm of her hand, while the muffled sound of the impact was dampened by the fabric of her yellow gloves. Hesitantly, Marja sat next to her, looking at her as if she could only know what was burdening Kirka so heavily by scrutinizing her carefully.

Kirka didn't even take out her writing pad. She stared in front of herself at the gravel-covered path and the grass stalks, bluish discoloured by the frozen dew, which swayed like a song in the tender, frosty wind. Tell me what is going on, Marja begged her mentally, but she knew that Kirka would not speak about it. Not here, not now. Not to her.

"You have something heavy on your heart," Marja said in a low voice, trying to radiate compassion. "Tell me what it is."

First Marja expected that Kirka would not move, but then she shook her head, weak and powerless. Kirka was so pale that she looked like a ghost girl, a helpless, pale ghost girl, and her hopelessness was so clear that Marja herself could feel tears in the corners of her eyes, but she managed to wink them away.

Unfortunately, through the tilted window covered with cobwebs, Marja could not see where Mrs Schröder was. Marja would like to have her sensitive nature too, but unfortunately she did not possess it and could not help Kirka in her depression.

Slowly, as if it took a lot of her overpowering strength, Kirka sat down straight again, took a trembling breath and felt for her pad next to her. For a fraction of a second Marja hoped to hear another story from her, albeit perhaps a sad, tearful story, but of course that was not the case.

Instead, she handed Marja her writing pad. At first she thought she should just have a glance to confirm it, as usual, but when Kirka did not take it back, she hesitantly closed her fingers around the creased paper, which had thousands of words written on it.

"Keep it," Kirka confirmed after she had pulled her arm back to herself and wrapped it around the other one to stop the uncontrolled trembling. "I've tried to start some stories, but, well... I lacked the ideas. I've only made the beginnings. Maybe you can end it."

Marja reverently looked at the barely letter sized pad in her hand as if it were a sanctuary. And so it was. One of the greatest that people had ever had, even if no one was aware of it.

Then Kirka remained quiet until Marja ended the silence: "So... um... I've got to go, afternoon classes are about to start, and I've been late the last few days, so -" But Kirka only waved off with a smile, even if it was just another fake smile. "It's all right."

Marja got up and rubbed her buttocks aching from the hard bench, while Kirka stared at the ground in front of her without another word , her eyes as much duller than they already were anyway, as expressionless as those of a dead person.

"So, will I see you tomorrow?", Marja dared to ask carefully. Thinking of a reunion with the cheerful, storytelling Kirka, Marja almost forgot the biting cold that had made her fingers and toes freeze.

Kirka did not look at her when she replied, and yet this time her words seemed to radiate more joie de vivre than before: "Whenever. "I will have the most wonderful tale of all written for you, believe me."

"I do," Marja assured her with a smile and set off, while her legs kept looking for a foothold on the icy ground, she had pulled the hood over her cold aching ears.

A beggar. A woman in white and her ghost horse. A flower girl. An elf apprentice. Kirka.

Marja kept thinking about the stories, the words Kirka had written down, the tales that were not finished. She took one of the wafer-thin papers between thumb and index finger and folded it back over the holder like a calendar to be able to admire the next page.

... raven black hair, shaggy and unruly like the nest of his namesake, sun-tanned skin brushed by a salty wind, which had fallen victim to the mercilessness of some hot summer days, and clothes like after an unsuccessful fight with an equally stray cat...

Marja read the beggar's description repeatetly, and she kept seeing the same picture as she imagined this man. At the part with the stray cat she grinned every time, because she imagined only too well how a beggar with a stick lying around defended himself against the hissing animal, while they both tried to get to a fish lying in the middle. "Shame on you, Marja!" her grandmother would have said. "It's really not funny!" And then there would have been an hour-long sermon about the poor people living in the streets alone and without money.

... so that only a white veil could be seen through the forest and he said: " She was sent by Death Himself. "I must be wary of her, or she will come to me and take me to her master." And so every person, every trader who went home from the market through the forest, every coachman who wanted to bring his passengers safely to the desired destination, everyone watched out for her. For the woman with the white dress with the bridal veil, which shines matt in the darkness and blows back even in a windless night. Her skin was as pale as the ghostly dress, and purer than the water of a mountain spring, only the carbon black hair was not of purity but of the color of her soul. The horse at her side shone in such a white, from the head to the hooves, not a dark place was to be seen as with the white horses of the king or even a farmer, only the smooth mane and the tired downward hanging tail were as black as the hair of his mistress....

Marja turned the pages.

... with green shimmering skin, lips violet like the color of her iris. Her eyes were as multi-faceted as those of an insect eagerly sitting on a flower to rob it of its nectar, and each facet had its own glow in the light. Her dress was woven from the fibres of the leaves and embroidered with all the flowers that were ready for it. The hair was dark green and felt like the stems of a daisy, a wreath of flowers adorned this splendour...

Her eyes were looking for the next part.

... the ears pointed as it was usual with wood elves, with hands soft as silk despite the hard work, always barefoot running without cutting the feet on the thorns, because the elves were friends of nature. His clothes were practical, a shirt of fine fabric, a dark vest over it, and trousers that were not torn, no matter the strain it was subjected to. The apprentice's shoes were made of wood, which protected his feet from even metal blocks...

This is how Kirka described the characters of her tales, but she had described one character - the last of all - in such a clear and detailed way that it could not be a coincidence. Her eyes are not like goat's cheese, like the winter sun, pale like white cherry blossoms or freshly fallen snow, blond hair like honey and originating from Finland. Wasn't that Kirka herself? Did she really describe herself there?

Again and again Marja read through all her stories, sitting on the white bench in front of the library for the next few days, and again and again Marja turned to her left to ask Kirka questions when she did not understand something or wanted to know more about it, and again and again she was disappointed, even though she knew it: Kirka was gone.