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From: An anonymous benefactor
Message: As Christmas came and passed in Durem, the weather took a turn for the worse and became a snowstorm. What were once mere flurries of snow blown about by a breeze have become thick sheets of the same delicate crystals blown about by sustained winds strong enough to bowl over the smallest and lightest of children, were they outside, and leave them buried underneath several inches of snow. In spite of it all, the hardy citizens brazen enough to face the weather carry on with their business as usual, although the cars on the roads are, understandably, few and far between.

It was on one such excursion into the blisteringly cold world outside the comforts of your apartment that your thoughts turned back to that girl who had only wanted to sell you some matches, and sharp pangs of guilt tore at your heart. You resolved to buy as many matches from her as you could if you met her again, and maybe treat her to a warm meal at a cafe to thank her for her generosity. So caught up were you in your musings that you didn't register the presence of another soul until you felt the hand of a stranger clap down onto your shoulder as you passed Salon Durem, and a voice filled with palpable desperation called out, "Excuse me..."

You turned to regard the source of the sound to find yourself looking into the hangdog face of a gentleman in well-worn and oft-patched clothing & a dark elf with several features that seemed familiar. The shape of his face, the tone of his skin, his hair color, even his eyes... if you didn't know any better, you would have said they seemed to echo the image of the Little Match-stick Girl. Looking at a very familiar-looking slipper without its pair in his free hand confirmed your suspicions: The man was her father.

"Sorry to bother you," he said as he released his grip on your shoulder to pull a picture out of his coat pocket. "But I need your help. The girl in this picture is my daughter." You didn't even need to see it to know who it is, but the picture was a mirror image of the girl's beaming, rosy face.

"I was wondering if you've seen her anywhere within the past few days. I sent her out to sell matches, and she hasn't come home yet. I wasn't myself when I sent her out; I was drinking to try to forget the recent loss of my wife, Carol, and I got angry and... well, I shouted at her to never come home again unless she'd sold all the matches that I gave her. When she didn't return by Christmas morning, I knew she took what I said to heart and hated myself for even saying it. I've been searching for her since then, and while I found one of her mother's slippers, nobody seems to have seen her."

In that moment, you did the only thing you could for him - you told him you had indeed seen her and where, and gave him the napkin she had given you. Seeing it brought a twinkle to his eye, a faint glimmer of hope. "Thank you," he said, handing the napkin back to you while also passing, wrapped within it, another mysterious item that felt soft and warm to the touch. "Take this; Holly would want you to have it, if she were here."

You turned your eyes away from him for only a moment - just long enough to unwrap the napkin once again to see what he'd given you - but when you looked back, he was nowhere to be seen, the snow obscuring his passage like a cloak as he walked away while calling out his daughter's name. You had no idea whether or not you would ever see him or Holly again, but you hoped, seemingly against the odds, that he would find her.

From: An anonymous benefactor
Message: New Year's Eve brought with it a welcome change in the weather for Durem as the storm dissipated, replaced with light snowfall accompanied by only the lightest of breezes. While the temperatures remained well below freezing for much of the day, the city was no longer an empty wasteland of ice and snow. For the first time in a number of weeks, the people of Durem were out in droves, reveling in the change in weather and the excitement over the year to come. Among the shop-keepers and patrons and everyone out on the town, lively talk of New Year&s resolutions abounded, and the city was abuzz with recollections of all the joys and sorrows the old year had brought. For once this winter, you thought while walking the streets that morning, all well in the city. All but one thing.

It had been quite some time since you encountered Holly, the Little Match-stick Girl. While you had hoped she might have miraculously survived the harsh winter, a growing part of you was forced to admit that she had, in all likelihood, been left to wander the city without being able to sell a single match until finally succumbing to hypothermia. Images came, unbidden, of her at the end of an alleyway between two buildings, settling in for a terrible night spent lighting every single match she had in a desperate bid to stay warm. For reasons you could scarcely understand, you continued to carry the napkin she had given you. It served, you supposed, as a charm; a harbinger of good fortune, and a vessel for the fleeting hope that the kind girl who had given it to you had held out long enough for her father to find her.

And what of her father? Until you met him firsthand, you had assumed he was a callous man who was quick to anger and cared little for his daughter. When the whole of his true character was laid bare before you when he begged you for any help you could give him, it became clear that there was much more to the story. A man, after drinking in a desperate bid to escape the void left by his other half, lashes out against the only thing he has left of her. A girl, frightened of what her own father had let himself become, doesn't come home for fear of angering him even further. And the thread linking the two: A harsh command given in a moment of weakness, one that the same father is sure to regret for the rest of his life upon discovering that worse came to worst.

As caught up as you were in your morose recounting of these events, you hadn't noticed you had garnered the attention of any of the people around you until a hand tugged at your coat sleeve as you were passing H&R Wesley, and a voice called out, "Excuse me..."

When you turned to regard the source of those two words, you couldn't believe your eyes. Standing there swaddled in their well-worn and oft-patched clothing were the smiling faces of those same two people you never expected to see again, reunited after all that had transpired between them. Just like when you first met her, Holly - now with both slippers on her feet - was beaming up at you with a rosy glow in her cheeks, and, like her father, looked to be holding back tears of gratitude behind her smile. Two words, "thank you", went unsaid, not that anyone would have needed to hear them. You just smiled back and said, "Now, about those matches..."

It was only several hours later - nearly midnight, in fact - that you finally parted ways with them. They had invited you and a handful of others that had helped in the search for Holly to their humble living-space for a New Year's celebration unlike any you'd ever seen, funded entirely by your generous purchase. Though the place was small and drafty, and their few furnishings spartan, nowhere else in the entire city would have been as comfortable a place to ring in the new year as that apartment. It was only as you were leaving, one of her departed grandmother's old napkins in hand wrapped around another pastry, that you stopped to ask Holly's father for his name.

"Haven't I told you?" He asked with a mildly confused look. "It's Nicholas."

With that, a contented smile broke across your face. You said your final farewell to the two and departed for your own home as the city's clock tower called out midnight, the gently falling snow obscuring your passage like a cloak.