“Comrade, it is the end for me. The cap of snow is on my head. I follow all things.”
The snow closed over it.
The other fir now stood alone. The snow crept higher and higher. Late in the long night it communed once more, solitary:
“I, then, close the train of earthly things. And I was the emblem of immortality; let the highest be the last to perish! Power, that put forth all things for a purpose, you have fulfilled, without explaining it, that purpose. I follow all things into their sleep.”
The sun rose clear: all the mountain tops were white and cold and at peace.
The long war between the crystal and the planet was over: the snowflake had conquered.
The earth was dead.
