Chapter Text
December 22nd. Bitterroot National Forest, western Montana.
It was bitter cold in the mountains. A light dusting of snow had settled in the trees and the heavy gray clouds promised more. The night was dark and winter-silent, unnaturally so; even the animals prowling in the shadows seemed quiet as stone. The threat of snow tasted sharp in the air, imminent but refusing to fall.
There was no moon, but cold light filled a small circular clearing nestled in the rugged peaks. There lay a man sprawled in the center of the icy grass, his skin blue and his chest a mangled bloody red. His eyes, wide in terror, were frozen- literally frozen, solidified into ice in his skull. He was not dead, not quite, but his breaths coiling soft and misty into the frigid air were little more than candle smoke.
A figure crossed the clearing to the man’s prone body, ice thickening under its footsteps. The figure stopped by the man’s side and crouched there, placing a pale hand over his faltering heart. There was no visible change in the man, but there sounded a distant sort of whoosh, like air entering a vacuum, and the man exhaled for the last time.
The figure stood and stepped over the body- for it was only a body, now- and passed through the clearing into the black woods, feet leaving no imprints in the frost. A few silent moments, and then something howled, long and chilling, to the hidden moon. And perhaps, beyond that, the low mournful blare of a horn.
It began to snow.