A dream:

There is snow all around, it covers the trees and the ground, it continues to fall steadily as everywhere you look it is piled at least waist high. You feel a chill a chill right down to your bones. Hills surround you as you trudge through the snow covered forest. It is utterly quiet, you can hear every now and then small snaps and crack that sound like limbs breaking under the weight of the ever increasing snow. You can see your breath in the air, it forms a white cloud with each exhale. You keep moving forward, towards what you are not sure but you are moving with a sheer determination. The sun, while it hides behind the clouds that seem determined to continue to coat this place in snow, has nearly finished it's day's journey. Soon it will get colder and as you look down at yourself, while these furs you are wearing will keep you alive in this weather you are not sure how well they will do for the coldness of night. As you continue you see yourself gathering bits of fallen branches bark from different kinds of trees, you toss the items into a bag slung over one shoulder.

Your perspective seems off, everything seems much larger than it normally does. Perhaps the trees here are much taller than elsewhere. As you continue you see an opening in a hillside. Its a small cave in the side of a hill, the perfect place to set up camp and conserve your warmth. You see yourself pull a flint and steel and take some of the bark and wrap it quickly around a stick and set it alight. An improvised torch sheds its light into the interior of the cave. The snow only making its way just past the entrance to the cave. You pick up a stone from the ground and toss it into the darkness. You hear it clatter of the far walls. You scream into the darkness and listen to the echos as they continue and seem to fade off into the distance. You shout again and again you hear the cave shout back at you in your own voice. It is not your voice. Both times you have shouted and the echoes back are not the soft feminine tones of your voice. The deeper tone of a young mans voice is the sound you hear. Not a boy and also not a man by the distinct and dramatic shift in pitch of the tone that seems to come out when the voice is pressed too hard.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

You make your way around the interior of the cave, the rocks are jagged and the cave seems mostly naturally formed, that is a good sign, no sign of pickaxe marks or other tools, that might indicate some kind of infestation by kobold or goblin. Quickly you turn back towards the entrance and make your way back to a fallen tree not too far from the entrance to the cave. The tree itself is not rotten and it looks like it may have been felled by some thing gnawing or clawing into the base of the trunk like a beaver or something similar. You make your way up and down it snapping off the limbs that you can and coming back again down the length of the tree with a hatchet in order to remove the limbs that remained. After placing them one on top of the other you start to drag the bottom one and the whole pile begins to slide along the top of the fallen snow rather than sink deeply into it. This makes it much easier for you to drag the collection of branches right up to the entrance to cave and begin to break them down into smaller pieces. You use the impromptu torch as the start of a small fire just a few feet inside the cave where the snow no longer covers the ground, this will keep the melt from putting out the fire while keeping close enough to the entrance to let the smoke exit. You can feel the whole cave slowly warming and you leave the fire burning as you go back to the fallen tree to collect any of the branches that are left behind. When you make it back you now have quite the collection of sticks and limbs that will make decent firewood for the night, it should last that long.

You step inside the cave and it is quite warm in here now, you start to remove your furs and as you do you can get a better look at the figure whose eyes you appear to be seeing through. From what you can tell it is a young man, 17 or so, no way to be sure. He sets the furs on some nearby stone and sets up in front of the fire. You outstretch your hands to the fire and here you can get a closer look at them, these are the hands of someone who works, they are certainly no lordlings hands, small scars and calluses cover the surface. There is a sound that echoes through the cave, a small clicking sound, like pebbles landing on a stone surface, then a rustle like like rustle of feathers. You can see nothing except the darkness where the light from the fire ends. Then it is quiet for a few moments. Perhaps it was just your imagination...........

You wake.