A winter meeting

I met the man at midnight in the trees and moonlight. Our footprints converging in the snow. At first, I took him for a keeper and felt an icy hand clutching at my neck - two birds hanging from my belt. But he was too well-dressed to be an estate man. Too well-dressed to be in those frozen woods at all. His coat was well-cut but not warm and his fine shoes were muddy and wet. He shivered as he stood. I wished him a good evening and he responded in kind in the accent of another country. Thinking of his frozen feet, I offered him hot food and dry lodging but, thanking me, he said that he had a long way to go that night. We nodded to one another and went our separate ways. Each walking in the other's footprints.

An Advent calendar made of old Christmas cards