The cold comes every win­ter, and every win­ter he goes out to meet it. He knows it will hurt him, but he can­not stay back. Does he like to freeze?

He could re­main in his house. It is a nice house. More of a cot­tage, re­ally, but at least it is warm, with a fire and every­thing (in fact three fires, one in the bed­room, one in the liv­ing room, and one he ac­ci­den­tally started in the kitchen while try­ing to bake his fa­vorite cook­ies; he knows he should leave the bak­ing to oth­ers by now, but he still tries).

But every win­ter, his friend the cold calls him, out in the three feet of snow (it pours in when he opens the door, but he opens it any­way).

“Why do you call for me still?” he asks, his large old wrin­kled hands pulling on the rope, ty­ing it into place. He should have worn his gloves, he muses. His fin­gers could catch frost­bite.

It’s get­ting hard for him to re­mem­ber every­one, now. He’s seen so many faces, heard so many names. He’s not as fit and trim as he used to be (to say the least), and he does­n’t know how much longer he’ll be able to an­swer the cold’s call.

But if he does not an­swer the call… who will? He shakes his head and laughs heartily.

He dons his coat. Finds his gloves and hat. Grabs the bag.

Flies away.