I could feel the cold metal of my improvised shiv biting through my woollen glove and into my right hand as I was lying prone, wrapped in a thick tarp I'd stolen three days ago from the local tanner. Buried in the still-falling snow, I grit my teeth. With the freezing temperatures ever sinking into the depths of my body, I had been surviving by eating the snow that fell into my left hand, held out just barely past the focal point of my eyes. Still, it wasn't enough, and after three days of waiting, my mouth felt like it was full of cotton. On the other hand, the thing about hunger is that you stop feeling it after about two days, and that's when it starts to get dangerous as your muscles begin to eat themselves to provide nutrients to your organs, namely the big greedy one called the brain, as a 16-year-old boy that had not eaten properly since the war began in earnest, the effect was becoming catastrophic.

Barely audible at first, the soft crackle of compressing snow tickled the inside of my right ear, and I had to catch myself before I sighed in relief. Not daring to move my eyes, I saw the blurry white figure slowly come into view in my peripheral vision. I just hoped that the berries from the bush on my left that I had smeared over my skin still smelled fresh enough to mask what I'm sure was my horrific smell and that enough of the limestone I'd speckled over my skin still blended me into the snow. Coming into focus as he crossed my vision was a large stag, 6 feet tall, his forelegs shrouded with muscles, visibly rippling under his short white fur with the sheer effort of supporting the extra 4 feet of antlers splayed out like a peacock above his head and tipped with deadly looking points. Too late, I realised he was close, far too close, as his right hoof compacted the snow about a half foot away from my right hand, but I knew I could not move. I had been waiting for this for far too long. Next was his left back leg. My mind was racing as I attempted to calculate the landing of his front left hoof as it started to rise, but all I could hear were my father's last words he had spoken to me, "Time waits for no man. We must grin and bear what it throws out to ravage our body and soul, as it will peel away the unnecessary and the unwanted to reveal a polished and hardened diamond. We all must do our human best to be that untouchable diamond".

However, to me, time seemed to slow and wait for a moment, like that first time you glance at the second hand on a clock. The inevitable first tick takes longer than those that proceed with it. Then the hoof came down on the palm of my left hand. Pain. Blinding, blurring, biting pain. Motes of light sprung into my vision as multiple pops and crackles came from some of the 27 bones in my left hand as they were crushed or broken. Simultaneously, I bit down on my dry, swollen tongue, clipping the scream off before it found its voice. Luckily the stag didn't seem to notice, being no Stranger to the sound of breaking twigs and crunching snow, as he bent down his massive head to the berry bush to start the process of scouring the delicious berries from it. This, of course, had the undesirable effect of placing more weight onto his front legs, and of course, onto my left hand. I had a choice to make. One of those choices was that I could try to stab the stag from my prone position, which would not leverage all of my strength and likely not penetrate deep enough into the tall stag, so I chose option two. Biting deeper into my tongue, I rose up using my already pain-racked left hand, then in a quick jerking motion, I both rammed the shiv home into the heart of the stag whilst shouldering the side closest to me to help brace myself, providing maximum force and leverage as I squeezed the muscles in my right arm to the extreme. I felt the stag shutter, then exhale his last breath as he started to go limp, shoving him away from me. He ripped the shiv out of my hand as he fell onto his right side, pushing my only shiv deep into his body.

I had won, but that wasn't what I was thinking about. The sensation of heat rushed into my left hand, and I moaned in pain as bolts of pain shot up my arm and assaulted my brain. Cradling my hand to my chest, I lost track of time, engulfed in the turbulent sea of pain assaulting me. The hot tears of pain running down my face left frozen lines of sorrow across my cheeks as soft sobs parted my lips. By the time I was coherent enough to once again understand my predicament, dusk was quickly approaching as the red hues of the sun started to paint the heavy clouds in farewell. I could not stay here, the more dangerous predators of Northern Encassia came out at night, and a wolf pack had been roaming the mountain for the last two nights. The only thing in my favour was that the shiv I had used seemed to have mostly stopped the stag from bleeding everywhere.

Taking a deep breath, I rose from my knees onto my feet, my body loudly making me keenly aware of every movement and protesting against my every struggle to get to my feet. Standing, I felt the ground wobble and almost toppled into the soft snow. Still shifting my right foot forward, I steadied myself before taking further stock of the situation. It was not good. I was hoping for a doe that would be more manageable to carry the 4 or so hours of walking it would take to get back to my home and family. My hand was in all sorts of burning, throbbing agony. I was already getting weak from hunger, exhaustion, thirst, and the near hypothermia I was sure was not far off.

I started to breathe in my nose, then hold my breath, before breathing out my mouth, once again holding my breath before starting the process again, with each action taking up a count of four. My grandpa taught me this when I was younger to focus my mind and help me think clearer. I was never really sure if it was the breathing that helped me or if it was the familiar process. Still, nonetheless, I found myself starting to plan what needed to be done. Grabbing my stolen tarp, I apologised solemnly to Grundoor as I would not be able to return it after this, then proceeded to wrap the dead stag in it before grasping its back hooves in my right hand, sighting the landmark I used to navigate this far into the Immosa forest and starting my long trek home.

The trek home would not be relaxing by any stretch of the imagination. I was dragging a roughly 170-kilogram stag behind me in a tarp with one hand, its antlers catching on the sparse but still existent foliage, the tarp had long since cut deeply into my hand, and the only help was that my trek was both down the mountain and in the snow, which the tarp slid quickly enough over. I had to rest twice, but I persisted. I had to get this food back to my family, or this winter would likely be the last for my household. Thinking about my comatose father, my ever-caring and forever patient mother, my darling carefree sister, my younger brother and even my grizzled grumpy grandpa, I couldn't stop. I repeated it, over and over to myself, that I couldn't stop just so I could keep putting one shaky foot in front of the last, willing one trembling leg forwards after the other.

It was dark when I cleared the last of the forest and crossed into the territory of the Bright family farm, marked by stones I stumbled over. Having drifted unfocused for a time as I made my way ever closer to home, I found a smile was touching my cracked, split and bloody lips as I thought of their daughter Ombra, easily the most beautiful girl in all of Fortis, with a wit that was not a hair less brilliant, she was always so headstrong and stubborn, always telling me that 10 to 15 minutes late was "perfectly punctual". My thoughts must have been too loud for my own good as the door to the Bright family cottage opened, and there she was, seemingly manifested by my own thoughts. How would I describe her at that moment? Well, if people were like the rain, I'd be amongst the millions of raindrops, unnoticed but indispensable, refreshing, and responsible for all the beautiful rainbows and flower blooms left after their fall, but she, she would be one of the rare first drops, the part of the rain that brings its wonderful smell, that sends all animals and humans fleeing away out of its path under threat of being washed away in its coming brilliance, the part of the rain that seems almost untouchable yet always the most warmly welcomed. She would be the part of the rain I long to reach, and maybe one day, if our journeys into the unknown cross paths, she will be the one I do reach. But tonight, she was clearly on her way to gather more of the dried firewood nestled beside the cottage, safe from the elements, the dwindling embers casting their light from the fireplace inside bathed her in their warm glow. She paused on the threshold, only taking a cursory glance around into the darkness before starting to move in the direction of the firewood before doing a panic-stricken double take after realising she had seen me, all of 50 meters away, smiling like an idiot. The last thing I heard before I passed out in the knowledge I was, at last, safe was her panicked voice calling out to her parents. With that, I let the darkness consume my consciousness.