I am Frozen
- Still -
in Space

Trapped between
solid Waters
and biting Winds,

All I ever
wished for
were some Wings.

~🧊~

I wandered through the frost-touched valley for what seemed like an eternity. The land was beautiful, but baron. There was no food, no warmth, and no life, save the snow-laden pine trees that reached on for miles.

Even as the sun bears down from its place in the cloudless sky, the sheets of snow blanketing the roofs of the tightly-packed greystone houses does not melt. The snow never melts here, and the frost on my breath so heavy it sinks shows exactly why. Even bound up in thick furs, like all the gaunt and dreary pale faces I pass, I feel the cold biting at me.

I was feeling weaker and weaker by the minute. I had lost our supplies in the rush the previous night. The pack of food was now buried under inches of snow. I knew I'd never find it. I didn't bother to search.

I'm so hungry, I'm imagining this plank of wood as a Meaty steak

Between dazzling brightness and dreary gloom, depending on how covered by clouds the sun was, I started to feel my resolve wain. I wanted to quit, to give up and leave this glorious, deadly place behind. But I couldn't. I thought of the mangled bodies of my family.

The guilt was overwhelming. Had I been there, not out in the city chasing men, I might have been able to fend off the beast.

The village wasn't home to many able young men, only three, and none had been around when it came. Then I thought of my companion in the cave, the frost surely still biting at his quickly freezing corpse. The guilt was worse still. As they wept over their families, my heart filled with rage. I felt the anger wash over me, masking the pain — I knew that now, as the cold bit at my own heart and began to thaw the fiery anger that burned inside. I had to almost drag our navigator into the mountains, and now he lay dead within them.

My companion was only slightly more willing. The wraith took both his wife and daughter, but even he wouldn't have set foot on these treacherous slopes if I hadn't driven him to it. I goaded him, playing off his torment. I had to kill the beast, it was the only way to unburden my guilty conscience.

Was the wraith that attacked us last night the same that cut down the villagers? It was impossible to say. They all looked identical, apparently. We didn't know exactly how many were living in the mountains, but we did know was they were mindless killers and even if I slew the wrong one, I'd redeem myself by culling a true vision of evil.

Wraiths were ancient creatures, powered only by a lust for death. I was always told that they didn't consume the flesh of their prey, they took the very life from them and fed off that instead. I didn't believe it, and I was still not sure. Except for the massive slashes across his torso where the wraith had cleaved him as he worked in the fields, my Father looked as he ever did when I found him. I expected the draining of life to look more dramatic, but maybe it wasn't something you could see.

I continued to struggle on through the wilderness, my feet sliding into inches of fresh snow with every step. My pace was slow and staggering. I had no direction in my mind, just eyes peeled for the sight of that luminous foggy trail. Bitter breezes sailed through the trees constantly, hitting me from all angles. Beneath my thick furs,

I was covered in leather padding wrapped in yet more furs. Beneath that were tight linens tucked into my boots and gloves. I was used to the freezing temperatures and knew how to keep them out, but in the mountains, where winds gathered speed as they whipped through the deep valleys, even I was succumbing to the pain of the cold. The steel greatsword, heavy on my back, was not helping either.

Nothing much changed all day, other than that I progressively shrank into myself, residing to the fact that I would simply wander these frozen wastes until I collapsed and died; dead wraith or not.