AVALANCHE
Only a few were willing to traverse the snow-capped mountains before the summer equinox,so I didn’t receive many visitors. Although sometimes a couple of brawny adventure seekers would attempt to climb my peak in the winter. They were always men. I’d offer my abode to them for a night, and they would thank me with gifts. My house had become something of a tourist attraction, nestled in the heart of a mountain. Some would venture to my old cabin just to see if it was real. They were welcome to stay, as long as they followed my rules. They were plainly posted on a picket sign made twenty years ago by a lost hunter.
He had been my eighth visitor, and he was quite poor. He offered to build me something instead of paying my fee. I happily obliged. I remember him fondly. He was a scruffy fox-looking man. His beard was overgrown, curly as a ball of twine. He had fierce green eyes, surely Irish, and his shoulder length hair was very red. I do not know if he is still alive or if he died on my mountain. Sometimes his profile will invade my dreams. From the side, he didn’t look quite so like a leprechaun.  His nose was too stern and his eyes were too deep-set. We could have been friends, but he had to keep moving and I wanted to stay in my hovel.
I assume he is dead now, his body lying on my very mountain. Maybe if the outside tempted me, I would search for his corpse. I feel no sadness for him, despite his kindness. He knew my mountain was dangerous, but he chose it anyway.
Quite dangerous, actually. Although it is known by many names, the most common is Lilith. It is the name given to the mother of all demons, and it suits my mountain well. It is very prone to avalanches, disasters that do not affect me because my house is built sturdily in the side of the great snowy beast. Occasionally, it will push my house deeper into the mountain rock and make it harder for people travelers to find.
But it has no consequence for me. Since I don’t intend to leave the house, I consider the extra solitude a gift. It is the gift I do not receive from others. Their gifts I thrive on. People bring me food in exchange for a warm room. Because of my visitors, I haven’t had to go outside in ten years. The supplies they bring me is more than enough, considering I only need to provide for me. The travelers are not allowed to eat my food or drink my water. It is in the very rules.
The hikers that visit me shall sleep on my couch.
They are not to speak to me.
They will not touch my things.
They will be gone by daybreak.
They will leave me a gift.
Once, a young man with black hair and ghost eyes asked me why my rules were so strict. I simply told him that I didn’t have to give him a warm place to sleep in the middle of a frozen tundra. That if he wanted to, he could leave. He didn’t leave of his own volition and I ended up having to kick him out. I believe he died like the Irish man. I’m sure of it. An earthquake hit less than an hour after he left. Ah, well. I couldn’t have saved his life if I had wanted to. Men died.
Always men. Girls never came to visit me and I guess that’s because they were too smart to climb Lilith. Sometimes I wished that a nice girl would accompany me, but instead I would only hear about them in Englishman’s dreams.
I also wanted an animal. I heard men whisper about their animals, and I have grown a weird urge to own one. That would mean another mouth to feed, but it would also mean that I would have a constant companion. I had been debating the topic when a blacksmith knocked at my door.
He carried many sacks upon his back and his hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. He opened the door himself and stomped inside my house upon heavy boots. He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it fiercely after he saw the rules. No one wanted to be kicked out. I showed him to the couch in the other room and returned to my home grown herbal tea. One cup a day and I haven’t been sick in nine years.
The man seemed nice enough, a good friend, but I knew he would leave soon. Being an indecisive person, I wondered whether or not I should talk to him. I haven’t carried out a conversation with a person since my leprechaun and my ghost man. I’m not sure my voice still works. Pretty quickly, I decided that talking to the stranger was a bad idea. I may be come attached to him, and if he dies I will mourn. I had no time for mourning.  I did, however, give him a towel to sleep on. Who knows what creatures lurk in my sofa? He nodded a thanks and readied himself for bed.
I retrieved a copy of the rules. I needed to collect his gift now because he would be gone before daybreak. He hefted one of his sacks and retrieved me many bundles of seeds. I took them without acknowledging him and I walked back into the kitchen.
I may plant them later when the floor isn’t so icey. The ice was to be expected though. It is winter, and the man tracked in snow. I hesitantly touched the white powder, scorching it back to water with my fingers. Maybe one day I could see the snow outside, although I still didn’t see the appeal.
It was hardly night, but I heard my stranger settling onto the couch in a hopeless attempt to find a comfortable sleeping position. I inched towards the door that separated him and me, wanting so badly to hear him while he dreamt. Some men talked in their sleep, and it was like reading a book or hearing a story. Only he wasn’t dreaming yet. He was singing quietly, as if not to let me hear him. I sat down with my back against the stone wall and listened. I don’t remember anyone ever singing.
I could make out some of his phrases, but some words were lost in the soft hush of snowfall.
I heard:
  When green grass grows
  And --- grows
  The blue skies
  Beautiful World
Then he stopped. I longed for more, although his voice was rough and scratchy. Is that what the outside world was like? I had forgotten what grass is, and what the sky is like.Was it worth the risk of leaving my haven?
He started to sing again:
  Annie
  With your green eyes
  My dark haired beauty
   How I love you
     Annie
That song was presumably made-up. He paused often and fumbled for words, but it was a declaration all the same. I had read romance books, and that seemed straight out of one.
I waited for him to sing another song, but the room was only quiet. Sighing, I collected myself and laid down in my own bed. The words of his songs were flowing continuously through my head.
I dreamt that night, unusually. I dreamt of dark-haired Annie dancing under the blue sky. Grass hugged her bare feet and she was smiling. The picture was distorted, though, Annie looked like a gruff man instead of a delicate lady. I didn’t have a woman to model her after, so she looked far more like an Englishman than a girl. I’m not sure the grass was really grass either. It was green like the man described, but it looked more like little snakes. I had seen many of those. Although the sky was like a grotesque quilt of alternating blue and white textiles, the Annie was happy.
I didn’t dream again that night, but I wish I had. I wish I had the same dream so I could have remembered it better. In the morning I was groggy and the dream almost slipped away from me like water. Even now, I feel as though I am missing some essential part of it. 
The blacksmith with the songs was gone when I woke, and I felt a sort of mourning loss. I do not think I missed him, so much as I missed his melodies. He had been my first visitor in months, as should be expected in the dead of winter, and his presence had spiked me with a strange curiosity. What if people stopped visiting my house? I act like they’re a nuisance, but I thrive on their company. Maybe I shall ask the next one to speak to me. I pondered the thought all morning, occasionally tossing up the idea of leaving the cabin. I had my hand on the knob, still deciding what would be best, when I heard it.
I guess I felt it more. The earth seemed to shake, but I knew it was only the mountain. I picked up the key that hungover the bed and scuttled to the trap door i hid in the closet. It opened easily, revealing by four space barely big enough to fit my body. It was one of the worst avalanches I’ve felt in years. Everything was shaking and I could hear the snow pounding on my mountain roof, making splinters of rock pour into my kitchen. I knew immediately that my blacksmith was dead, and so were his songs. For the first time in ten years I felt like weeping. So I let my thoughts whisper the lyrics, filling in random words where there were none. I did not let myself cry.
The shaking stopped pretty abruptly, and I unlocked myself from my hiding spot. The avalanche, as usual, had little effect on my mountain cottage. It was too sturdy. An aluminum tea cup had fallen, but it wasn’t breakable. And my single wooden chair had tipped towards the wall. I picked it up along with the cup, ready to return to my silent life of solitude. Sitting in the chair, I opened the book that rested on my wooden table. “The Odyssey”. I opened to the eighteenth page and attempted to decipher the words.
Books had always been my way of survival. The way the authors made the world sound, it was magical. And certain books, like romance stories, would make me want to go outside and fall in love. But then there were books like “Hamlet” where everyone dies; those made me wonder how much the world had changed. Maybe that explains why so many people wish to die on a mountain.
I had started receiving books when a kind gentleman gave me his copy of “Romeo and Juliet”. I had not accepted it at first until he read me a passage. That had been eight years ago. He had been a kind man too. I believe he may be alive still, starting a family and making a profit.
I was trying to write my own stories and poems like singing man, but the words sounded forced. Instead of verbally painting a picture like Shakespeare, I was simply compiling phrases. I used one of his sonnets as a reference for my works, but my love stories lacked passion. I sometimes wish that maybe I could live in a love story. Maybe then, my stories wouldn’t be dry, but they would blossom like the other authors.
That’s when poems became a popular choice for me. I decided to write a poem about what I thought the outside was like. I was well into my third stanza when a faint knock came at the door. I thought it was a phantom at first and made no move to answer it. If there was a stranger outside, he could enter. The knock came again, then a sort of metal rustling. Finally, the door burst open and my visitor entered.
I was struck by overwhelming astonishment at the sight of my visitor. I had been expecting a burly man, but in my doorway was a delicate woman, like those I have heard about. She was quite tall and lanky. She had jet black hair and eyes to match. Her complexion was that of milk, but her cheeks were like a red rose. She wore a heavy coat which bulged out heavily in the front. Peeking out from inside her jacket was a brown eskimo hood. A baby. Not only had a woman attempted to climb Lilith,but she brought her baby. She glanced over my house and her eyes locked with my rule sign.
I should make her follow the rules. Her gender doesn’t make her any different than my other visitors. But of course it did. She was a young woman with a child. Surely she has to know songs. If I could only ask her…
She had gone to the room with the couch by herself and I lost my nerve. She was quite assertive. I heard her surreptitiously raiding my fridge when I was going to the bathroom, and taking a blanket from my closet. I didn’t mind, probably because the baby needed the food and warmth. I had almost given them extra food, but embarrassment took over. Instead I went to sleep and dreamt of the woman and of Annie.
When I woke up, the woman was gone. I realized I forgot to ask her for penance. I hardly settled on that. A woman. A woman had climbed Lilith. I hope she survived.
Then I heard the crying. It started soft and muffled, but grew louder and more obnoxious. I went into the other room to find that although the woman left, she was hardly gone. Her sack was on the couch with a blue blanket thrown over it. And her pudgy baby was lying face-down on the couch. She had her mom’s hair and her complexion. When she opened her eyes I was surprised to see pale green eyes instead of black ones.
She stopped crying, and cocked her head at me. Her sweet innocence emanated from her. She didn’t realize she should be mourning for her mother. She was too young. She smiled at me and said “Moma!”. A word I have only heard in stories. I guess I could look like this girl’s momma. My skin is fair and my hair is dark. We were close ages as well, she only around thirty. Why would her mother leave her? With me? I may never find the answer to the that question, but I didn’t care. Her mother had given me the key.
A baby.
My Annie.