FotN '21: Blizzard

The wind howled through the endless expanse of snow. So much had fallen that it swallowed most of the landmarks around him until he was no longer certain if he was heading towards Malakai or towards the scent of blood he’d caught before the snow had even begun to fall. It should have been a quick hunt, chasing something already injured. Even with the stench of beast and blood began to wash away with the snow, it had felt like it must be over the next hill, maddeningly just out of reach.

Leshen thought, at times, that he could still catch the scent on the wind. Leshen also thought that it might be him, that somehow the cold had broken open his metal ribs and wormed its way around his heart, pushing the excess out of his body. His form was so ephemeral and unreal despite the fact that it was real, that he had been inhabiting it for some time now; it often felt like he was little more than a ghost, a whisper waiting to fade that last little bit until there was nothing but silence.

The cold, at least, made his body feel real the way most things didn’t. When the haze of familiar confusion and dissociation began to encroach, the pain was there to pull him out of his head and back into his body. He forced his feet to move, pushing through the building snow, unsure where he was going, what he was following, but he was certain that there must be something at the other end.

The wind caught the ruff of fur around his neck, seeming to pull him along at the weaker moments, when he thought he might find nothing, that this might be it: endless and lost.

“Leshen!” a voice howled above the wind, and Leshen lifted his skull and followed the call.