Krieger produced the Jar from a large pocket in the lining of his coat. It was an old screw top jar, of glass and filled with water.
 “What’s that?” asked Misha of the Jar.
 “Snow,” Replied her father, sadly.
 He held it up to the cool grey light, examining the contents.
 “Or it was snow.”
 Misha looked out across the valley to the great slabs of the mountains in the distance. All she could see was white. It was, after all, winter and the blizzards had left their thick, freezingly beautiful blanket on the land. Her father clung on to the container with his long, gloved hands. So tight, Misha thought, he could have broken the clear, brittle glass and let the water spill.
 “There was no snow.” He said, “No real snow, and never at Christmas. My friend lived far to the East, and inland, where the winters were so much harsher. One day she sent me a package, all wrapped in red and gold. I opened it, and found this inside. My own White Christmas, something I’d never had.”
 Misha looked doubtful, saying it was surely just a jar of water, and you couldn’t make it back into snow because she’d tried and it just turned to ice.
 “Yes it is water, but in it I could see mountains! Mountains covered in pine trees, and the pine trees covered in the deepest and most beautiful snow. Now I have those mountains, and the Jar is filled with nothing but melt -water.”
 Krieger took the lid in his hand and twisted. He poured the water slowly. It fell down below the balcony, was caught by the wind and carried by it, whirling and spitting its way westward, towards his land of yesterday.

“And now it will be snow again.”

Misha no longer looked doubtful. He always did teach her well.

 

***

Misha dreamed that night. Not of snow, or of jars, but of a place far away and distant. So distant, she thought, it might never be. She knew the dream well, though she had never dreamed it herself ‘til now. It was her father’s dream.
 When Misha woke up, she left her room, went downstairs and filled a jar with water. Misha wrote the dream onto the surface of the water with her father’s old ink-pen. It turned black, like her winter gloves. She kept it with them in her secret cupboard, behind her bed.