ONCE UPON 24 TIMES: STORY XVIII

Story the Eighteenth:
IX - The Hermit
Frau Holle (Dyed Moroz)
(Éponine and Cosette as the sisters, Valjean as Dyed Moroz/Grandfather Winter -maybe some other characters as seasonal personifications? Maybe some Friends?- DONE: Prouvaire, Enj, and R respectively!)

Ever since that fated blizzard, no one in the northern French village of Montfermeil has wanted to take over, or tear down, the Sergeant's inn. The landlord and the landlady died in prison, in the bleak midwinter, already weakened by the cold when the National Guard came over to seize them. And the people of the village hold the site to be cursed, no matter how generous the offers made by strangers to replace the tavern with anything else of convenience that may better their lives. Just for the same reasons that the locals curse, as passionately as they once had praised, the surname Thénardier.
No one should say that a non-commissioned officer and a camp follower cannot get quite far in this world, especially during peacetime; for 'tis unnecessary as long as they follow the right wake and, what is the most relevant, find a lucky strike. To cut a long story short, that was the case of Sergeant and Madame Thénardier in 1818.

(violets - berries - mushrooms)
...
(it was the winter solstice - Cosette out on the streets - little matchgirl reference)

Not knowing whether to turn left or right,
She wandered over marsh and field,
Into the forest and the night,
Where she found soft snow to lay her head,
yet knew she'd die if she lay and went to bed.

...

fire glowing near, in the circle of stones (warmth of firelight - little matchgirl reference)

Around the fire there was the circle of twelve stones; and, leaning against each of four stones that were equidistant, forming a cross, there was a person standing still, wrapped in a long cloak that formed a riding-hood over their eyes. One of them, the most slender, wore a cape green as a meadow, and dotted with wildflowers that seemed to be alive, just like the wreath that graced his reddish-golden ringlets; the second's was a scarlet hussar's pelisse soutached with braids of gold as bright as the sun; the third, crowned with ivy, wore mostly tabby catskins patchworked with coarse cloth as purple as ripe Merlot grapes. And the fourth, the one who appeared to be the broadest of chest and strongest of limbs, who towered above the others even as he took his place and sat down on the stone throne (for one of those four stones was like a chair sculpted by the winds and winters), was a polar bear of a man dressed in a thick snow-white shapka and a matching coat, so thick that Cosette doubted whether it was snow, bearskin, or his own body hair.
Upon coming closer, the waif recognised Grandfather Winter in the gentleman with the long, bristly white walrus moustache, whiskers, and eyebrows who sat on the snowy stone throne; he was the only one who wore a bâton in hand, in the shape of an icicle crowned with a six-pointed ice star. Poor Cosette approached the fireside, rather frightened, as she shyly muttered:
"Good messieurs, please let me warm myself by your fireside... the cold is freezing me to death..."
Old Man Winter studied her from crown to toe, bony and mottled with frostbite as she was; then he courteously nodded:
"Why are you here, my little girl? What do you seek?" Surprisingly, his eyes were bright, his voice warm and velvety. His whole self was soothing to Cosette.
"I'm... looking for... violets..." She looked up and met his reassuring gaze. His upright bearing and physical strength were surprisingly those of a young man, decades younger.
"They are out of season," quoth Grandfather Winter in his warm, deep voice. "There are no flowers during my reign."
"I know..." the waif shyly sighed. "But Aunt Thénardier will beat me black and blue if I do not bring any home... Good messieurs, please tell me where I can find any!"
A closer look from those icy blue eyes at Cosette's face and limbs told something that was indistinguishable to the common person; that not only Nature had been a cruel stepmother to the little one. Something stirred within that heart of ice and frosted granite.
Old Man Winter stood up, and, addressing the young person in green, whose cloak and the doublet he wore underneath were dotted with all kinds of wildflowers to match the surprisingly living wreath on his curls, he gave the younger person the bâton in hand and showed them to the throne:
"Brother Springtime, this is your affair."
Clasped in that hand as soft and white and delicate as a lily, the sceptre gradually changed from an icicle, bursting forth from ice into greenery, until it became a bouquet of bluebells and buttercups and daisies and cornflowers... Voilà that the flame lifted up to the skies, and the flowered cloak fell from over Springtime's head, revealing a cascade of long ringlets the colour of rosemary honey, crowned with a loosely-fitting wreath of the self-same springtime flowers.

(after violets - berries - mushrooms)



COMMENTARIES:
The original draft with Sansa and Arya became an Éponine / Cosette story... also, excuse me for killing off 'Ponine and breaking the Thénardiers like that, but the story I took for a model, the Dyed Moroz tale, has the wicked stepsister dying of hypothermia and the stepmother mourning her...
A white-haired, bearded (well, walrus-moustached in JVJ's case), gnarled yet youthfully strong old polar bear of a gentleman like Valjean just sounded too similar to the concept of Grandfather Winter that I had to put this element in this retelling... There are also elements of the Little Match Girl (by Andersen), whom Cosette has always reminded me of, and Vasilisa the Loveliest (a Baba Yaga tale with a Cinderella setup and the wicked witch as the most unlikely of fairy godmothers).
The Dyed Moroz version I mainly borrowed from is the most well-known one, from Bohemia (the present-day Czech Republic), as told by Bozena Nemcova and Édouard de Laboulaye (his version is  "Les douze mois" from Contes bleus), as well as The Four Seasons here.
It took me a while to find who would be the other three seasons - it was then that Prouvaire, Enj, and R stepped in to take their place. And along with them came the idea of the sceptre changing shape, being a bouquet, a flag, a thyrsus, and an icicle respectively.
The beginning, with the haunting of the inn being the first thing told, is inspired by the opening lines of the Magyar Bluebeard in Women who Run with the Wolves (which begins with the titular villain's unusually coloured facial hair being on display as a relic in a convent, and his tale told by a nun to visiting strangers).

When a star falls, 
a soul rises up to take its place.
The falling star-soul reincarnates once more.