The winter school holidays were approaching, and every morning Kata would jump out of bed and run to the window to see if it had snowed last night. If so, she could spend the break sledding, snowballing and building snowmen.
Two days into the break, he woke up on the third morning to unusual shoe kicks. Someone was tapping their foot in the hallway, causing the paving to clatter.
The strangely familiar noise made her run to the door in her pyjamas, and she saw her father in the open doorway, trying to knock the snow off his boots.
"Well, the weather's turned out to your liking," said Dad. It snowed all night. You'd better get the sledge out of the cellar.
Kata quickly got dressed, had just finished breakfast and ran next door to her little friend Marci, who was an enthusiastic partner in all her games. Marci was ready for the snow, whether it was sledding or snowball fights.
During the morning, they took turns pulling the sledge, on which one of them sat and the other one sat, then they had a good snowball fight and thought they could build a snowman in one place before lunch.
And so it was. Even Mum complimented the full-bodied, carrot-nosed, pot-hat-wearing snowman. She suggested that they make him not just a nose, but a mouth. She gave the two children a handful of peeled pumpkin seeds, which, neatly arranged in rows, made a smiling mouth.
A similar programme was planned for the following day, except for the snowman building, which was already done.
The next morning, however, both Kata and Marci were surprised and disappointed to find that their snowman was not smiling. The smile made of pumpkin seeds had disappeared from his head, and the snowman looked very sad, even moody. We can't let this happen, the children thought, and decided to give the snowman his smile back.
Now they've been found to be making lips from chopped pieces of straw, which presumably no one wants, as it's assumed the pumpkin seeds were stolen by their beloved garden birds to satisfy their hunger.
But the next day, to their great sorrow, they saw sadness again on the snowman's face. The pieces of straw had fallen off and were blown to pieces by the cold winter wind. As the snowman stood there in the yard, alone and disappointed, it was bad even to look at him, for you could see from his face that he was bored, unhappy and very sad.
The children had to think about how to put a smile back on their snowman's face. We'll dream it up at night," Marci consoled her little friend. "I'll do my best," said Kata.
The next day, the little girl woke up a little later than usual. Maybe it was the long night of thinking before going to sleep, or the late-night cartoon, but the fact is that she fell asleep that morning.
During breakfast, Marci knocked on their door. He waited until Kata had swallowed the last of her food, slipped into his overalls and boots, but had no patience to put on his hat.
He pulled his little girlfriend by the hand into the yard. As soon as they stepped out of the door, Kata's mouth lit up in a smile. As did the snowman, with a much smaller snowman, a sort of girl, standing close by. Both had smiles made of tiny stones.
"Meet the 'snow lovers'," said Marci. I dreamed it up at night, I dreamed it up, and in the morning I made my dream come true. A friend was missing from our sad snowman. A friend like we have for each other. We can only have fun playing together, having a good time together, and of course smiling a lot in the process.
The snow lovers' smiles didn't disappear soon. It stayed on their faces until the snow melted, just as the smiles on Kata and Marci's faces didn't disappear because of the winter break.
