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Realistic or Modern The Bitter End

Ammagaruqnik

Ammagaruqnik

Botanist

The Bitter End 
​


Winter came early this year, bringing with it heavy snowfall and a certain chill that prickled at the skin relentlessly. The cold invaded the little house, seeking to spread to every corner.


This place was really no different from everyone else's within the village; it was small, quaint and sparsely decorated. The wind pressed hard against the exterior of the cabin, screaming and howling eerily, but even still the walls stood in place. There were no lights, and no electricity inside, just a fire and a lamp burning on a wick dipped in oil. The light covering the interior with a mesmerizing yellow and orange glow.


The fire was small and it was slowly burning out, but you know if too much wood was used on this night, then there might not be enough later on, and who knew when that next chance to go outside would be without freezing to death.  The little village in the midst of this storm would suffer for this. Not only were the people not able to gather enough necessities to prepare fer the weather, but it damaged the harvesting season too, cutting their usually gains in half. 


You stand before the fire with your arms crossed. Around your shoulders is a heavy wool shawl that you distinctly remember had also been in the house since your childhood. On the ground at your feet is a small boy huddled by the stone fireplace with a blanket pulled tight around him. 


Your little brother may have never known a time were he wasn't cold or hungry.. He's seems to take these kind of nights unusually well, considering how miserable it's been, but tonight seems different. 


You sense it too. 


He turns his head to look back and up toward you with his dark brown eyes, his curly black tresses are soft and move with the turn of this head. You had just cut his hair a week ago, so his hair is a bit short, and far more tame than usual. 


And then he asks the unthinkable for such a young child, and it is something you cannot deny had crossed you mind as well once or twice since the storm began. 


"Are we going to die here?" Your seven year old brother asks, with a pitiful, defeated and cold look as the wind rattled harshly against the thin walls of the cabin. 


1. >  Answer with sarcasm. 


2. >  Tell him no, and be firm about it. 


3. >  Give him your honest opinion, starvation and severe cold is on your mind. 


4. > Opt out of reply.
 
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2. > Tell him no, and be firm about it. 
​




"No!" You blurt out instantly, falling to your knees on the floor beside the child. Already tears edge his eyes from the fear of dying as you pull him close, protectively. You understand that it might have hurt him too much to face what you really believed in all of this, and despite not wanting to lie to him, you say it for his sake. "Of course not!" You whisper fiercely, as if you couldn't fathom the prospect.


In your mind this is the right choice- the best one to keep positivity. 


He seems to accept your words, and trustingly hugs you back with unwavering faith. He's too good for this horrible life and you know this well. Feeling your throat tighten, you realize not even you believe in your own words, and yet something about them instills hope within you. For some reason, trying to remain positive helps, just a little. 



"We've come too far just to die in a snow storm, Rowan."  You joke weakly, and feel the small nod of response from him too. He never knew mom or dad, but you try your best to act how they would in these situations; calm and comforting. You grew up quite fast when they passed away, but that didn't mean you were without your own problems and ignorance. How many years have you lived? 17? 18 by now? 


A rattling cough shook Rowan with such an intensity that you froze immediately. The sound was so heart wrenching and terrifying that you feel everything in slow motion as your pulse quickens and your eyes gaze down to the sickly form in your arms. 


The cough is better than it had been, but you still hate the sound. You hate that he's suffering more despite having such a cruddy life. 


He claims softly that he wants to go to bed, and you readily comply by grabbing a few pillows from the bed and setting up a makeshift one before the fire. It'll be warmer here.


You watch him curl up into a tight little ball on the floor, and lay down too, using your shawl as a blanket. Watching the fire burn you fall into a heavy dreamless sleep, hoping the by tomorrow at least the snow will have stopped. 


--


In the morning, the sky is still dark, however, the wind is not nearly as strong as it was. The fire is terribly low, and only hot embers remain in the hearth. You are freezing cold and your breath is visible. 


Rowan still sleeps but he shivers under his blankets. Quickly, you toss a log into the fire place and get it burning again. 


This can't continue. You are already down to one more day's worth of wood to burn. You know you need to get your own but you also know that this action calls for you to leave the cabin and to the outside cold, and you don't have that much strength to exert at the moment, to top it all off.  You eye a hatchet on the small, wooden, dining-room table and get up, wrapping your shawl close around you once more. There no one to buy dry firewood from who is mildly within a distance you could travel. The nearest person you can think of, who may have firewood, lives almost 3 miles away, and you have nothing but your own two legs to rely on- who knows when your handmade boots will fail you. Biting your lip, chapped from the weather, you glance to your sleeping brother and make a quick decision. 


1. > Take the hatchet.


2. > Travel 3 miles to another house.


3. > Stay inside. 
 
1. Take the hatchet. It might be possible to chop down dry wood closer to home than three miles away.
 
1. It might be a little tricky to find wood that's dry enough to burn, but having to walk for 3 miles under these circumstances is just insane.
 
1. > Take the hatchet.


You are hyper aware that if you do nothing and stay inside, it could mean a night without firewood. It's not even worth chancing as you walk over to the door and pull on your boots. There may have been another choice, a trail that wouldn't include walking through the forest, but you reason that three miles is far too long. Overall you would be walking six, there and back, and you really didn't want to leave your brother alone for so long. 


With your boots on you walk across the wooden floor in order to pick up the hatchet with only one reservation about this all. You have no idea if you'll be alone when you enter the forest, and despite efforts to tell yourself it'll go smoothly, you have a gut-feeling that it never does. With a final look cast toward Rowan, still sleeping beside the fire, you turn on your heel and moved toward the door. 


Opening the door, you aren't completely shocked to find the snow has built up to your waist against the door frame. You aren't extremely tall, but to put it into perspective, the snow was a least Rowan's height. The ice glittered in the morning sun as fat snow flakes fell at a steady pace. You take your first awkward step out into the cold and press down the snow. Everything is covered in white outside of your little cabin. The trees, the garden, and the woodshed (which you know to be empty). 


You close the door behind yourself, now fully immersed in the winter air, you wad over toward the direction of the woods, holding your hatchet close and ignoring the stinging feeling of cold that the snow gave when it escaped into your boots and chilled your toes from the outside. 


Out of the corner of your eye, you see movement but you do your best to ignore it and play it off as a trick to your eyes . You walk toward the trees that surround your cabin. Right at the edge of your yard a cluster of great pines stand tall in guarding passage into the forest. You hesitate for a moment before you put your way through the branches. Snow fall of of them as they swing back into place behind you. You look forward in the woods, the trees are tall and reach high into the sky, and the snow is a little light here due to it mostly collecting on the branches of the trees around you. You hardly make a sound as you walk, the snow is so fluffy that it seems to mute all noise. The sight is breath taking, but rather than staring for too long, you busy yourself, looking for smaller trees to cut down with your hatchet. 


The further into the forest you walk, the darker it seems to get. You get a good distance from your cabin before you realize that the wind ceases to blow, making the temperature a little more bearable than before. Still you are absolutely freezing, and you suddenly wish you had something to cover your hands with as they held onto the hatchet, seeming to only make them colder as a result. 


Before you know it, there is a tree that seems decently small enough to cut and burn; it is a nice evergreen, and you adore the smell of it. You take your hatchet and you begin to chip away at the small trunk. The impact when it connects with the tree, hurts your freezing, sensitive hands, but you grit your teeth and power through until the tree falls with a soft brushing thud. 


You are tired just from this action. The air is thinner, and it feels almost too hard to breathe. You are hungry from the little food you've eaten, and the brightness of the snow reflecting the sunlight is causing you to become dizzy. You hold on to a near by tree and gather your strength for a few moments. Once you've caught your breath you move to grab the heavy end of the tree to drag it back with you. 


A dark shape approaches your line of sight and you freeze immediately. It may have been something you could have ignored before, but now that it boldly came out you know now that there's no pretending. You watch a great, black wolf step out into your path. It's eyes are alight with a certain wildness that promises your demise. You know that the wolves tend to stay away from humans. You figure in the split moment that you've come too close to it's territory and now it's here to chase you off, or worse. Your options are limited and it slowly pads closer. You've heard stories from other people in the village that a hungry wolf is the most dangerous when food is scarce. You highly doubt you can outrun it if you tried, and who knows if it's alone or with others, you can hardly see far enough in the distance with all these trees in the way, however, you know you need to do something- it's only getting closer, it's only a matter of time until it springs... 


1. > Run. 


2.> Scream for help. 


3. > Fight it. 


4.> Make yourself as small and nonthreatening as possible. 


5. > Attempt to scare it away. 


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We should try to appear bigger, and maybe scare it off, before fighting it. Running and making ourselves small show we're prey, but shouting and seeming bigger shows we, too, are a predator. And would anybody really be nearby to aid us when the closest person with wood is three miles away?
 
5. > Attempt to scare it away.  


Might as well , given how adverse wild life is to primal displays of dominance.
 
Omnimon said:
5. > Attempt to scare it away.  


Might as well , given how adverse wild life is to primal displays of dominance.
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Actually, bears will attack if you attempt to scare them. But since this is a lone wolf, scaring should do the trick. I second. 
 
Definitely choosing 5. as well. We can't outrun a wolf, and just like @GreenBirdie already mentioned, it would only make us look like prey if we were to make us small. Chances are also pretty slim that there'd be another person close enough to help us out of the situation, so yelling for help won't do us any good either, i think.
 
BobbyW said:
Definitely choosing 5. as well. We can't outrun a wolf, and just like @GreenBirdie already mentioned, it would only make us look like prey if we were to make us small. Chances are also pretty slim that there'd be another person close enough to help us out of the situation, so yelling for help won't do us any good either, i think.
Click to expand...

Somebody hearing us shout at the wolf would likely investigate, too, so calling specifically for help isn't very useful.
 
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