Wardrobe

Villager: Eiche

He speaks with a thick, rough accent, in broken sentences and with harsh, foreign words thrown in. When you ask where he is from, he smiles and tells you he's a long way away from home. But it's all right, it's all right. There's work to be done here, he says, help to be given, and hope. He is not home, but this place needs him, so he stays.

The house is warm and comfortable, basked in the orange glow of candles and the roaring fire in the hearth. The furniture is wooden, and so are the walls and the floors, worn looking but solid, cared for. There are plants growing everywhere, on the windowsill and on the heavy wooden furniture, flowers blooming on the table, in pots and glasses and boxes, filling the entire space, and you wonder how they thrive when it's always winter here. It smells of spring, of crocuses and hellebore and snowdrops, of lilac and snowdrift, a jarring contrast to the cold bite of ice from outside.

He settles you down by the fire, on an old rocking chair covered in soft, worn blankets. He gives you a cup of hot chocolate, and a smile, bright as a spring morning, and you can't help but smile back and think, it will be all right.

It's winter, outside, bitterly so, the wind howling and rattling at the door, snow packed high on the streets of the village.
But in here, it's spring, and it will always be.