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Snufkin knew something was wrong the moment Snorkmaiden said his name in that far too cheerful, pleasant way.
“Snufkin?”
He looked up from packing away his coffee pot. She was standing far too neatly, paws clasped behind her back, smiling as if she had already won something. This was never a good sign.
“Yes?” He asked cautiously.
“There’s a little market in the village today.” She began, “Just stalls and shops and things. Nothing too serious.”
Snufkin narrowed his eyes, “You’ve already described it as ‘shops.’”
She laughed, waving a paw, “Oh, don’t be like that! I only meant we could look. You like looking at things, don’t you?”
He considered this. He liked looking at rivers. Trees. Clouds that drifted where they pleased. He did not, as a fact, enjoy looking at items whose entire purpose was to be owned.
“I like looking at things that don’t expect anything from me.” He said eventually.
Snorkmaiden tilted her head, “Well, you don’t have to worry. I’m sure the clothes won’t mind.”
“The clothes.” Snufkin repeated flatly.
She stepped closer, her voice dropping into what he recognized as her reasonable tone, the one she used when convincing, “We don’t have to buy anything. Truly. Just a walk.”
He opened his mouth to refuse. It would have been easy. Natural, even. After all, he had refused much bigger things than markets.
But then she smiled at him again, bright and hopeful, and added, “I just thought it might be fun, you know. The two of us, going out together.”
Snufkin tried to prevent his face from turning a full shade of pink, and, in doing so, he realized this outing was going to be non-negotiable.
“Fine.” He agreed at last, “But only to look. And not for long.”
Snorkmaiden beamed, tail flicking happily, “Of course!”
They made it exactly three steps into the market before the first stall caught her attention.
“Oh!” She exclaimed, already drifting away, “Snufkin, we have to look at these!”
He sighed quietly to himself and followed, paws buried in his pockets, repeating to himself that this was temporary. Entirely temporary. Like rain. Or recovering from a small scratch.
The stall was covered in scarves. Soft, colorful ones piled chaotically together. Snorkmaiden was already lifting one after another, holding them up to the light and trying some on herself.
“This one is just lovely!” She exclaimed, “And this one! Oh, and this one would look nice on you.”
“No, it wouldn’t.” Snufkin said automatically.
She ignored him, draping it briefly over his shoulders. He froze. The scarf was warm. Absurdly so. And… not unpleasant. At this thought, he quickly tried passing it back to Snorkmaiden.
“You’re the one shopping here, not me.” He said, refusing to let himself get involved.
Unfortunately, the shopkeeping Hemulen had noticed them, “Ah, buying a gift, are we?”
Snufkin stiffened, scarf still in his paws, “No.”
“For your sweetheart?” They continued.
“Certainly not!” Snufkin bristled, cheeks burning at the thought.
Snorkmaiden flushed a similar shade of pink and laughed, “We’re just looking!”
“Of course, of course.” The Hemulen said, unconvinced.
Snufkin stepped back, handing the scarf over as if it might grow roots, “We’ve looked. Thoroughly. Let’s go now, please.”
“But we’ve barely started!” Snorkmaiden said, “There’s a whole row of stalls we haven’t seen yet.”
He stared at her, “That was not part of the agreement.”
She gave him an innocent look, “You said ‘not for long.’ I think that’s very flexible.”
It was at that moment Snufkin realized two things.
First: He was already carrying a small bag that she definitely hadn’t been holding when they arrived.
Second: He was going to be here for a while.
As they moved on, Snorkmaiden chatted happily about trinkets and pastries and things she might give as gifts someday. Snufkin listened, nodding every once in a while, the weight of the bag tugging gently at his paw.
He told himself, firmly, that he didn’t mind. That this was simply part of getting to know her. That possessions were still unnecessary and markets were still ridiculous.
So when Snorkmaiden glanced back at him, smiling as if the world were exactly as it should be, he adjusted his grip on the bag and followed without complaint.
After all, he reminded himself, they were only looking.
***
Snufkin thought he had reached a kind of emotional equilibrium.
He carried four bags now. None of them were his. One clinked faintly when he walked. He didn’t question why.
“This isn’t so bad!” Snorkmaiden cheerfully skipped ahead of him, stopping in front of yet another stall, “You’re surviving, aren’t you?”
“Barely.” Snufkin grumbled back, adjusting the straps of his rucksack and shifting the bags in his paws. The weight was beginning to become awkward, but it was still manageable. He walked carefully, as if the items might tip themselves out and tumble into the busy market.
Snorkmaiden, of course, did not notice. Her eyes were instead sparkling at a collection of small, painted figurines.
“Snufkin! Look at this little frog!” She let out a soft squeal of delight, holding it up to the sunlight, “Isn’t it just adorable?”
Snufkin squinted. The frog was painted to look exactly like every other frog he had ever seen.
“It’s… green.” He said, trying to mask the flatness in his tone.
“Oh, wow, green!” She gasped ironically, as if he had just discovered a new word, “Come on, don’t you see its little eyes? They’re perfect!”
Snufkin couldn’t help muttering under his breath, “I’m surrounded by things that do not matter.”
“Oh, you always say things like that.” Snorkmaiden teased, twirling the frog gently in her paws, “You sound like a grumpy, serious old man!”
“I am not a man.” Snufkin corrected, “I am… enduring.”
“Enduring!” She repeated with exaggerated drama, clapping her paws together, “A hero is what you are, Snufkin. Carrying my bags, enduring the market, bravely ignoring adorable wooden frogs!”
Snufkin’s paws twitched, “Not a hero. Just a reluctant participant in consumer chaos.”
Snorkmaiden nearly dropped the frog in her laughter, “Consumer chaos!” She echoed gleefully, “Well, I shall tell everyone then! The tale of the brave Snufkin, conqueror of consumer chaos!”
“Please, do not do that.” He sighed, but he couldn’t stop his lips from twitching upward.
The next stall they approached was heavy with fruit. Piled high in wooden crates sat an assortment of shiny red apples, golden pears, plump berries, and other such delicacies.
Snorkmaiden darted forward, “Ooh, look at all of these options!”
Snufkin, still gripping the ever-growing pile of bags, followed at a careful distance, his eyes scanning the scene with a polite suspicion. He was about to remark that fruit should belong to trees, not crates, when a small, eager voice piped up.
“Please… may I have it?”
He glanced down. A little Woodie, eyes wide and paws clasped, was staring at a bright red apple that had rolled to the bottom of the stall and now rested on the packed dirt.
Snufkin’s gaze softened.
He crouched slightly, gently nudging the apple closer to their tiny paw, “Here.” He said quietly, “It’s all yours.”
The Woodie’s face lit up, and they grabbed the fruit with a delighted squeak. They chirped out a thank you, scampering away before Snufkin could even consider a reply.
Snufkin straightened, feeling a rare, quiet satisfaction in his chest. That had been… Simple. Pleasant.
However, to his terrible luck, the stall owner had been watching. They crossed their arms, eyes narrowing, voice sharp, “Hey! That’s not for free! You can’t just take merchandise!”
Snufkin froze, glancing toward where the Woodie darted off, then back to the owner, “Nobody took it. It fell.” He said evenly.
“Fell?” The owner repeated, raising a brow, “You picked it up and gave it away! That’s still stealing!”
Before his defiance could make him say anything more incriminating, Snorkmaiden stepped forward, eyes bright and warm. She smiled in that disarming way she always seemed to know just when to use, tilting her head and placing a paw on Snufkin’s shoulder, her way of saying let me handle this.
“Oh, but it really wasn’t stealing.” She said lightly, voice honeyed and persuasive, “The apple was on the ground, already bruised and damaged, might I add, and my friend here simply wanted to make a little Woodie happy. It was… very kind of him.”
The stall owner huffed, but Snorkmaiden’s gentle cheer and calm insistence seemed to soften the edge of their anger, “Well… I suppose, if it was meant for a little one…” They muttered, rubbing the back of their neck.
Snufkin, unused to this kind of situation being smoothed over so quickly, felt a little disoriented.
“It wasn’t my intention to cause a scene.” He mumbled to Snorkmaiden in apology.
“You didn’t.” Snorkmaiden assured, patting his shoulder, “You’re just… experiencing the market in your own way. That’s all.”
He blinked, and before he could reply, she was already skipping toward the next stall, eyes shimmering. Snufkin followed, a faint warmth tugging at his chest.
It was… not unpleasant. Having her help like that.
He still couldn’t stand shopping, though.
They moved on with the flow of the market, the crowd thickening slightly as the stalls grew closer together. Everyone around them shifted, slow and uneven, like a tide changing its mind.
Snufkin once again adjusted his hold on the bags in his paws, following Snorkmaiden’s lively chatter. She flitted ahead, then paused, then darted sideways, too quick for him to track all at once.
He glanced to his side as someone bumped into him.
He looked ahead again.
Snorkmaiden was no longer there.
He frowned slightly, scanning the stalls ahead, assuming one nearby had caught her eye. But he couldn’t see her familiar form anywhere. Not by the stall gleaming with jewelry, not by the one covered in bright flowers, and not by the one selling a ridiculous amount of cakes, either.
He turned, looking back through the flow of creatures.
“Snorkmaiden?” He called, keeping his voice level.
The market responded instead. Laughter. Bargaining. The clatter of wood and coins clinking.
He shifted in place. Annoying, he thought. Mildly inconvenient. He took another step back, then stopped again, eyes moving at a slightly quicker pace.
She should have answered.
He waited, listening harder than he meant to. His shoulders tightened. The crowd pressed on, unfamiliar faces sliding past, none of them the right one.
“Snorkmaiden?” He tried again.
There was a brief, unpleasant stretch of silence where he could no longer pretend this was going to be nothing. His chest began to feel tight, not painfully, but just enough to be noticed. Just enough to bother him.
He turned fully now, scanning left, then right. The bag handles dug slightly into his paws as his grip tightened. He didn’t like this. Didn’t like how quickly his attention had narrowed into one simple, unhelpful thought.
She should be here.
“Snufkin?”
The name landed like a released breath.
He turned, a little too fast.
Snorkmaiden stood only a few steps away, holding a small paper-wrapped bundle, her expression curious rather than concerned.
“Oh! There you are.” She said, “I thought you were right behind me.”
He looked at her for a moment, longer than necessary.
“You wandered off.” He stated.
She blinked, “I only stepped over here.”
He adjusted his grip on the bags, deliberately loosening his paws, “Well, yes, I know that now, but… You weren’t where I could see you.”
That made her pause. She studied his face, then nodded.
“Alright.” She said gently, “I’ll stay closer.”
They walked on together. This time, she stayed near his side, close enough that their arms brushed when the crowd shifted. Snufkin matched her pace without thinking. When someone pushed past them, he angled his shoulder, making space.
Snorkmaiden noticed.
She smiled, quietly, and didn’t say a word.
The next stall they found was a hat stall.
Hats of every kind, in fact. They were stacked, hung, draped, and balanced in ways that suggested the very laws of gravity simply didn’t apply to them. Wide-brimmed hats, pointed hats, soft hats, hats with ribbons, hats with feathers that shook in the breeze.
Snorkmaiden gasped softly, tugging Snufkin’s sleeve, “We have got to see these!”
“Wait, we don’t need-” Snufkin began.
But she had already stepped closer.
“These are wonderful!” She exclaimed, lifting one, then another, “Look at this one! And this one looks so cozy.”
Snufkin sighed and followed her in, clutching his bag handles like lifelines, “I already have a hat.”
She glanced at the green one perched atop his head, “That’s… true. But this could be a different hat.”
“That is exactly the problem.”
She ignored this and picked up a soft, deep brown hat, with a faint stripe of golden thread spiraling around the crown. It caught the light in a quiet, elegant way. She turned, eyes lighting up.
“Oh,” she said, “This one.”
“No.” Snufkin stated, with feeling. He enjoyed his own hat just fine.
“Just try it!” She encouraged, “You don’t even have to like it.”
“That’s rarely how these things end.”
She stepped closer anyway, holding it out. He hesitated. The market still bustled around them, full of chatter and laughter and creatures who owned far too many things. Somewhere behind him, a shopkeeper was definitely watching.
Snufkin sighed.
“Fine.” He said, reluctantly removing his precious hat, “But only for a moment.”
Snorkmaiden grinned victoriously and gently placed the new hat on his head, adjusting it with careful paws. It felt terribly different. He went very still, as if any sudden movement might cause something irreversible.
She stepped back to look at him.
Snufkin waited for the inevitable cheerful nonsense.
Instead, she paused.
“Oh,” Snorkmaiden said softly.
He frowned, “What?”
She tilted her head, smiling in a way he hadn’t seen before. It was quieter, thoughtful. “You look… really nice.”
The words landed like a stone dropped into still water.
Snufkin felt his ears grow warm, “It’s just a hat. I wear one all the time.”
“Yes.” She acknowledged, “But still. This one is… different. It really suits you.”
He looked away, suddenly very interested in a nearby stack of identical felt caps. His voice felt thick, “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“I didn’t say it did.” She replied lightly, “I just said you look nice.”
The shopkeeping Hemulen hummed behind them, “It does flatter him quite nicely, doesn’t it?”
“No.” Snufkin said immediately.
“Yes!” Snorkmaiden said at the same time.
She laughed, reaching up to straighten the brim just a little. The gesture was brief, but Snufkin’s thoughts scattered like startled birds.
“I don’t need to look nice.” He said, flustered, removing the hat and holding it back out, “Nor do I want anything for that purpose.”
Snorkmaiden took it from him, paws brushing his for half a second too long.
“Well, for the record, you don’t need things to look nice.” She said, “You just do.”
That somehow only made matters worse.
He cleared his throat, “We should go.”
She nodded easily, “Alright.”
Relief flooded him, until she handed the hat to the Hemulen, “We’ll take it!”
Snufkin turned sharply, “We will not!”
“It’s for you.” She said.
“I don’t want it.”
“I know.” She replied gently, “That’s why I’m buying it.”
He stared at her, “That doesn’t make sense.”
She smiled, “It doesn’t have to.”
The transaction was completed before he could protest further. Moments later, she pressed the hat into his paws.
“You don’t have to keep it forever.” She said, “Just… for today.”
He looked at the hat. Then at her. Then back at the hat.
“This is manipulation.” He stated.
“Maybe.” She admitted, “But you’ve been carrying my bags.”
That was unfair. But he only sighed and placed the hat onto his head with care, putting his old one gently into his pack. He found he missed it already.
They continued moving, and Snufkin tried to ignore Snorkmaiden’s eyes on him.
She grinned playfully, “You’re adorable when you pretend not to care.”
“I am not adorable.” He rejected, adjusting the straps on his shoulders as they walked on.
And when the breeze picked up, Snorkmaiden noticed he walked just slightly closer to her than before.
***
Later, with the new hat planted respectably on his head, Snufkin wandered with Snorkmaiden further into the heart of the market. The crowd thinned slightly as the stalls opened into a small square, where the sound of a lively fiddle floated above the chatter, carrying a tune that made paws tap and tails sway.
Snorkmaiden turned to him, eyes shining, “Oh! Snufkin! Would you dance with me, please?”
Snufkin froze mid-step.
“Dance? …Here? Now? With all of this?” He lifted his arms, attempting to showcase all of the bags, which had about doubled in size over the course of the day.
She smiled, “Just drop them!”
Snufkin tilted his head, blinking, “Just… drop them?”
“Of course! I insist!” She said, tugging gently at his sleeve, “After all, they’re just things! You don’t need them for a moment of happiness.”
What.
He looked down at the mountain of bags in his paws and then back at her, a flustered mixture of utter disbelief and confused amusement on his face.
“I suppose.” He said finally, setting the bags down with a careful clatter. They formed an impressive, colorful pile that could probably survive a small flood.
Snorkmaiden reached for his paw, “Come on! Let’s go!”
Snufkin hesitated for half a heartbeat. Then, as the music picked up, he let himself be pulled into a dance.
The world shifted into a whirl of warm sunlight and music. Snufkin’s paws felt warm in Snorkmaiden’s as the music lifted around them. At first, he kept his movements more cautious and precise, almost stiff, as if he were negotiating with an invisible border around his boots.
“Relax,” Snorkmaiden said softly, tilting her head with a mischievous sparkle, “Just feel the music.”
Snufkin’s eyes flicked to hers, searching for hidden traps, but all he found was that familiar, bright, encouraging smile. Tentatively, he let himself sway a little, letting the rhythm nudge him.
“You’re… surprisingly okay at this,” Snorkmaiden teased lightly, “For someone who claims to dislike it.”
He looked down at their feet, “Well, it’s not the dancing I dislike. In fact, I very much enjoy a good dance. …It’s the audience I’m not all too fond of.”
She let out a laugh, and the sound was like sunlight bouncing off a river. That laugh loosened something in him. Slowly, his shoulders relaxed, and the careful, calculated steps softened into something lighter, freer.
“It’s not so bad.” She whispered, “Pretend it’s just me and you.”
Snufkin glanced at her, caught mid-spin, eyes shining. He had never seen her like this, so alive, so completely present. And for the first time that day, he didn’t feel like he was enduring the world. He was in it, moving with it, with her.
“Careful,” he said in mock seriousness, stepping close, “You might make me enjoy myself.”
“You already are,” she said softly, a flicker of pink on her cheeks, “I can tell.”
He froze for a heartbeat, letting the words sink in. The market, the bags, the endless stalls, they all melted into a blur of sun, music, and laughter. He found himself spinning once, then again, laughing quietly under his breath at the sensation of it all.
Snorkmaiden’s paws found his shoulders as he steadied himself, and her laughter mingled with his. The music carried them forward, and for a moment, it felt as though they were the only two creatures in Moominvalley, twirling in a bubble of joy,
“You’re smiling.” She said, catching his paws again, “I’ve never seen you smile like that.”
“I…” He murmured, unsure if he should admit it. But the warmth in her eyes was gentle, inviting, “...I think I might like this.”
Her laugh was soft and delighted, brushing against his ear, “That’s exactly what I was hoping for.”
He looked at her, really looked at her, and saw the way the sunlight danced in her fur, the way her eyes sparkled with mischief and kindness, and for the first time, he felt it, the fluttering, unfamiliar tug of something tender and close. Something that wasn’t a market or a cluster of bags or even a hat. Something about her.
“You make all of this… bearable.” He admitted quietly, his voice almost lost in the music.
“Just bearable?” She asked with a smirk, tilting her head.
He swallowed, feeling a rare shyness creep up, “I mean… enjoyable.”
Her smile widened, warm and knowing. She leaned in slightly, brushing her paw lightly against his arm as they twirled, “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She said softly.
And for the first time that day, Snufkin laughed without restraint, letting the music guide him, letting the world fall away, and letting the warmth of her paws and the lightness of the movement fill him completely.
As the fiddler struck a final, cheerful chord, they slowed, spinning together until they came to a gentle stop. Snorkmaiden’s paw lingered in his, and he found himself staring at her, suddenly aware of how close they were, how easy it felt, and how he almost didn’t want the moment to end.
“You know,” she said quietly, “I think you might just survive any market after this.”
Snufkin tilted his head, the gold thread in his hat catching the sun, and a smile tugged at his lips, “Perhaps,” he admitted, “As long as you lead the way.”
And in that sunlit square, surrounded by the lingering echoes of music, Snufkin felt a rare, quiet happiness bloom inside of him. One that had nothing to do with the shopping, and everything to do with her.