Twin dragons forming a heart, tribal design

The pass has been shut nine days and the snow has buried the lower windows, so I am writing by the kitchen fire with the good candles, because there is little else to do but feed the stove and listen. You will laugh, but the two dragons came down again last night. Red from the north ridge, blue from the far side of the col, the way they have every hard winter since your grandmother kept this place. For forty years they kept to their own mountains. Then the spring the bridge washed out, they met above the chapel roof and the whole valley flushed pink and violet for an hour.

Last night they settled on the frozen tarn below the stables and folded their wings until the tips nearly touched. The light between them made a shape I can only call a heart, as though someone had drawn it with a fingertip in the frost. Old Sebastijan swore they were quarrelling. I told him dragons quarrel the way weather does, by shouting until the air is clean and then leaving it. He was not satisfied, so I gave him a second brandy and he went to bed muttering about dowries.

This morning the snow on the tarn had melted into two wide curves that met at a single point. In the middle lay a red scale and a blue one, side by side, still warm enough that the frost had not settled on them. I have put them in the drawer with your letters. When the road opens, come up and see them for yourself, and bring the good thread, because the stable roof will need mending before the thaw.