FIRE AND ICE 

By Tessa Harvey


    It was deeply, achingly, bone-chillingly cold. Darkness ruled over the Arctic. The small lights of the airport and the taxiing plane were mere specks in the endless night, soon vanquished. The tears froze on the child's cheeks. The Smith and Johnson families gathered her close, a child of another race, blond, blue-eyed, wrapped in the love of the people, the Innuit.
    They took her home, warmed her, fed her and left her staring at the darkness and the beautiful shimmering colours of the Northern Lights, twining and moving in a great ballet of beauty.
    Not for the first time Helga wondered why her archaeological parents had chosen to live so far from their chosen work profession.
    She went to school, still a little dazed. They had said they would return in a week or two, just as they always returned. But she felt already bereft.

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