>Pine Ponder puts another cone at the center of the pretty ornamental rug.
>She brings her nose closer to it and sniffs.
>It smells like rozin, like pine needles, like the ground it was collected from.
>It's as if in the tiny oval shell, behind the rugged scale-like segments there was a whole forest.
>A forest that will be, or, perhaps, the one that would have been.
>She cocks her head, bends her neck looking at the cone from several angles.
>Every cone is different. Every cone is fascinating in its own way.
>The size, the form, the pattern of its scales.
>Every of them tells the tale of the tree that bore it. It tells about the branch it was attached to.
>How much light from the sky it got, how fertile was the soil under the tree, how much of the molten snow the tree likes to drink, how nutritious is the soil under it...
>How hungry other cones around are.
>Pine Ponder shifts her ears, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.
"O, pine cone, tell me your secrets."
>She thinks.
>And the cone is eager to provide, forest spirits are gracious toward Ponder.
>In an instant the cone bursts open, tossing its small nutlets around.
>Now it becomes puffy and round, looking like a miniature fir, despite hailing from a pine.
>Pine Ponder nuzzles the cone and smiles.
"Thank you."
>She whispers and carefully takes the cone in her mouth, relocating it onto the pile nearby.
>It's full of other cones that already have told their story. Now they will be decorating the village, will make a lot of snowfoals happy, giving them their own tiny things to ponder.
>Pine Ponder raises every of the four corners of the rug, one after another, to collect together the hoard of pine nuts from all the cones, lying around on it.
>The hoard is sizable. Pine Ponder wraps it up with the rug.
>The nuts will make plenty of tasty sauce to spice the dishes at the communal dinners.
>Pine Ponder looks around and sees Puffins.
>The petite mare is working near the drying rack.
>She takes cut and salted fishes from a basket and lays them out on the rack.
>As always she wears her foal satchel over her back.
>Pine Ponder takes the prettiest cone from the pile and walks towards Puffins. The snow creaks under her hooves.