Out in the Cold : Part 1

Part I - Nothing Anymore

The dead of winter kept no prisoners.  It was the sort of cold that crept into one’s mouth if they were to open it, freezing the soft warmth of their throat until it stole their breath away.  A whiteout of a storm held the world in its grip, pouring out its despair and spurring fate.  There was no silence in that baleful tempest—only a howling that resonated with grieving hearts and shattered minds.

Each step was a struggle through the dunes of snow, their touch so poisonously cold against cloth and flesh.  One hand kept on the wound in her stomach, holding back the rivers of blood that seeped between her fingers.  The other hand blindly scoured the blank nothingness for any sign of hope.  But each yearning finger found nothing but cold, empty air.

How could you…

The words lingered like a ghost on her tongue.  She was too weak to push them out but they echoed in her mind like funeral bells. 

How could you… how could you… how could—

A numbness had spread from the soles of her feet to past her knees.  It mangled her steps, pulling her into an ungraceful descent into the bleak snow.  A series of blinks later and she could feel the cold seeping into her clothes.  Her vision teetered between clear and not, the world a colorless hellscape as the snow continued to fall in heaps.  Somehow, she managed to roll onto her back, facing the distant heavens.

It never occurred to her that she was dying alone out there in the uncaring wilds.  The idea felt impossible, banished by a flame of rage that burned searing hot in her chest.  It burned louder than her pain, tainting each breath with the sort of wrath that only grieving hearts knew.  When she closed her eyes, she still saw them all.  Smiling faces.  Years of memories together.  It had been a pretty picture once but someone had dropped it on the tile floor.  The pieces lay scattered but in them, she still saw those pretty faces.

I loved you all.

Tears welled in her eyes, too angry to freeze in that cold.

…

Smiling faces.

…

Happy memories.

…

Carefree moments.

…

They had looked so different when they had worn her blood.

She fell into a deep slumber there, the snow around her running red. 

 --------

Crackling.  Popping.  A stew’s scent gently blew past her nose.

When she opened her eyes, she stared long and hard at the wooden ceiling overhead.  There was some dust on the supporting beams.  The planks had been cut from an oak, she believed—it had a sort of soft yellow tint to it.

“It’s about time you woke up.”

She turned her head slowly.  There was a certain warmth in the air and she soon spied its source—a burning hearth.  Sitting above the fire was a cauldron, its blackened hull licked by flames and its contents boiling within.  In front of it was a figure, enveloped in a black robe.  There was scarcely a visible detail about the stranger, even when they turned to look at her.

“You’ve been sleeping for three days now.”

The voice that came from that figure was a wavering, echoing thing.  It was recognizable but not definable and that troubled her.  It felt like a pull back to a time that was somewhere beyond the veil of what she could remember.  She mulled over it as she stared the figure down, still cutting through her drowsy haze. 

“Who are you?” she asked the figure, who chuckled a few not-quite-sinister notes.

“Someone who wanted to help you,” came the enigmatic answer.

“That’s not a name,” was her sharp reply, voice crackling then breaking through the gunk that had gathered in her throat.

“It is not,” acknowledged the figure.  “But maybe you ought to tell me yours first.  Isn’t that how the custom goes?”

And then she paused.  There were a lot of names in her mind, tangled together like roots.  She picked at them but their stubborn mass frustrated her.  Instead, her brow creased in deepening confusion and irritation.

“What do you remember?” the figure asked.

Well, that was a question, wasn’t it?  A question that she soon realized she had no answer to.  There were memories but they were shadows.  She knew things and she did not.  Everything drowned in a radiating hurt in her chest, a pulsating seed of grief and dread.  It ached, spreading from her core to her limbs.  She stared down at her hands, taking note of how her fingers gave small twitches as if remembering how to move.

“It hurts.”

The words slipped out from between her lips as a taut, fearful quiver.

She could not say more than that.  Her thoughts spiraled, chaotic as an ocean plagued by a storm. 

“You were lying in the snow, bleeding out.  I brought you here,” the figure said.

That all sounded familiar.  

“Thank you,” she said because that was the polite thing to do.  But no matter how she tried to urge gratefulness into her heart, it never came.  There was just a pain and a hollowness and the question of ‘why’. 

“You will make a full recovery,” the figure continued.  “Your weapon, less so.”

Her stomach did not flip—it rolled slowly in her abdomen, painstaking and uncomfortable.  The stranger moved to a table at the far end of the room, lifting a distinct blackened glaive handle.  Its ends had been shattered, leaving jagged prongs and part of a design that vaguely resembled a garland.  The hair on the back of her neck rose, feeling a weight and a shame press down upon her chest.  Ruined… she had absolutely ruined it…

“Ah…”

The handle was dropped back onto the table— a mannerless and borderline cruel gesture.  It clattered against the remnants of what it had once been.  She winced, gaze trailing down to her hands. 

“What do you intend to do now?” the figure asked.

What a strange question.

“I don’t…” she fumbled, losing strength in her words.  It all turned to ash in her mouth.  Every desire withered; every yearning faded.  What WAS she going to do now?  Was there anything even left to do?  What was her name again?  What had even happened?  Her mind reached for the answer and then gave up the pursuit almost at once.  It was all so crushing.

The stranger’s lip curled, a haughty sort of smirk.  And then they turned to the fire, arms folded across their chest. 

“May you find the answer sooner than later.”

 --------

The next days came with no sign of the storm outside weakening.  She sat in that bed for more hours than she ought to have.  The idea of getting up-- of trying-- felt too much for her legs, as if they were made of feeble twigs.  But one day, she did manage it, standing before the cottage window as the snow blew down in sheets.  The stranger had fixed a mug of warm tea and its heat pressed against her palms. 

“I’m proud of you, you know.”

The stranger’s voice was not kind—it was never kind.  It was always knowing, it was always smug.  It was always a pinch away from caustic. 

She glanced back at the enigmatic figure, brows creased in tandem with an anticipating frown.

“You actually got out of bed today.”

Maybe it was supposed to sound nice but it didn’t.  She looked back out the window.

“I don’t understand why you saved me,” she said to the figure.

Even without seeing their expression, she could feel their dissatisfied frown aimed at the back of her head.

“Why do you say that?”

“You don’t even know who I am.  I don’t even know who I am.  Just someone without a name.  No one that would be missed.”

“You had to have been someone once.”

Maybe that was true.  Maybe there was something about the feeling of the mug in her hands that called back to a quieter time.  She took a sip from it, the liquid almost scalding her tongue on the way down.  Bitterly, she swallowed through it, upper lip curled into a frustrated sneer.

“If I was, then I don’t remember anymore.  So does it even matter?”

“What a miserable way to view things.”

She let that comment of theirs hang in the frosted air.  Another drink was taken, a defiant scowl on her face.  If her savior wanted to be so snide, she would let them.  Did she really owe them anything anyways?

“Be that way, if you so desire.  But you’ll understand before long that there is never really a choice in the end.  There is only one thing left to do.”

She scoffed.

“I don’t need you to read fortune cookie messages to me.”

And that was the end of that conversation, the two of them falling into an uneasy silence as the snow continued to fall in thick, unyielding sheets.