A breath out, condensed in the air. A breath in, kept short. Fingers in gloves, still cold. Swaying, jiggling her legs, as if juggling her body. To keep warm, obviously. Stones creaked and scratched together beneath her shoes. Where she could easily reach the waters edge, thin ice cracked beneath her feet. She thought of crème brûlée. A faint memory, her last birthday. They had been out somewhere. "You break it gently with the back of your dessert spoon." She said to no one in particular in a funny voice, wondering when such a thing would come in handy. Music, laughter and smiles faded. Short breath in. A dragon breathing fire out. She watched it hang in the air. It was cold. Her mum was walking further ahead, overjoyed looking at something at her feet. Seaweed perhaps. Occasionally waving for her to come over, but she just smiled and waved back. In these moments, she took to talking to herself. As if she also had a little friend by her side, though not a little friend, perhaps the same age. A boy. That listened. And had a proper accent. Like, you know..

"Look out there. Look at the view!" It said. Her friend's voice. She looked. It was alright. She looked to her left, her mum was still frantically prancing in the snow by the sea. To her right, the car. Parked.

"Lollies. I could eat lollies." She said to her friend, but really to no one in particular. She was thinking of the chocolate bar from the last Statoil. The truck driver in front of them in the queue had pointed it out. "The original KitKat!" He claimed with Norwegian patriotism. He bought one too.

"Yeah right." She kicked a rock. Her toe throbbed a little in her snowboot. Her feet were sweaty. Funny that. She wasn't phased. She wasn't excited. All she did was squint and look. Look that way, look the other way, and then look that way again.
"Eat them later. Just look at that view. Seriously! You've just got to."

Her arms fell to her side, her hands snug in gloves. She didn't look left to her mum, and she didn't look right to the car. She didn't look down at her feet, or the rocks, or the ice. She stood and looked out. Across the fjord. Her little friend's voice was gone. She looked and looked. The mountains were nougat swirls and ice cream. All scooped up and smoothed out like it is in the shops. The setting sun made it all pink. It looked like a watercolour painting that was seeping colour into the sky. Pink continued from the swirls of mountains into the spotted clouds and further turning into a pale blue. Sharp breath in, dragon fire breath out. She blinked. And again. And another. Swaying her shoulders, jiggling her legs and juggling her body to keep warm, her eyes didn't leave the dessert landscape, the pink horizon.

"Hey, you!" Her mum's arms enveloped her and shook her lovingly to warm her up. Smiling, her mum started to move towards the car, not stopping to look out across the fjord. The girl was still standing there, eyes looking straight out. Her mum stopped and turned back, questioning what fantasies had taken her daughter this time.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" The girl said with a proper kind of accent. Like, you know.