Snow & Ash

There’s something about the darkness that is familiar. It’s not necessarily the look of it, more how it feels, warm and moving, humming with energy. This darkness is something alive, something swirling beneath closed eyes that won’t open just yet. He can swear there is someone calling his name, though the sound is muddled and far away, and it isn’t so much a name, but it’s something close enough. 

Soon. A voice tells him, though he’s not sure who the voice belongs to, whether it’s his own, or someone else’s that he’s long since forgotten. 

There are many things you’ve forgotten, he realizes suddenly. It should be more alarming than it is, but that familiarity doesn’t leave him. It muddles his thoughts and feelings into a gentle calmness. A numb sort of nothing that’s just waiting to blow up into a panic. 

His eyes ache against the pinch of light that appears in his vision. The darkness scattering away as if it were never there in the first place. Color dances behind closed eyes, streams of blue and green and purple, and everything in between, but when he finally opens them, it’s to a blanket of nothing.

The snow is perfect, an undisturbed blanket of white crystals sparkling in this sunshine, and right in the middle of it, he’s buried in a hole.

He doesn’t feel cold, doesn’t feel any pain, all he can feel is tiredness and a gentle release of pressure as he emerges.

He pulls himself free from where dirt and ice had once held him beneath the earth in a shallow grave, not packed too tightly as if whoever put him here was waiting for him to climb back up. 

But there’s nobody here he can see. Somewhere, a raven calls, just in the distance, and when he turns he sees a walking staff stuck into the ground. A grave marker, or tool, he wasn’t sure, but regardless, he shakes himself off and grips the wooden stick, using it to hoist himself up, he looks down on himself, examining his body. 

His arms are scarred, the flesh torn and then healed over and over so that angry lines of red and white rake across his skin. They came with no memory of pain, no lingering ache that hint at what could have caused such anguish. There is a tear in his shirt, beneath a long line of a deep scar over his heart, he presses down on it and holds his breath. He waits a moment, eyes clenching shut as he listens for the beat of his own heart. He stands there, chest empty, head foggy, and tilting as the silence that surrounds him. He gasps, sucking in a harsh cold breath. Maybe it’s better this way. 

And maybe it is. So he begins walking. 

One step. Two steps… The snow crunches under his feet. He keeps his head down, sheltering his face from the icy breeze. Three steps. Four. 

It was a strange thing to not remember where you came from, even stranger not to care. Something must have happened to him, scars are stories after all, and he was covered in them. But he couldn’t help the mild discomfort that came with the sight of them. Maybe they were his to carry, but they didn’t belong to him. None of it did, only the name he still heard in the distance. Though it wasn’t really a sound. More of a feeling, a direction calling out to him, and all he can do is follow it. 

By the time he reaches the small cottage, the sun was lowering beyond the peaks of mountaintops. It had appeared suddenly, out of place in this wilderness, but then again, he too was out of place. 

The door swung open without the protest of a lock. The cottage is functional. A half kitchen and sleeping cot prioritized over any decoration. There are bookcases only half-filled lining the back wall and a door that leads to a small bathroom. He walks inside, shutting the door behind him. With the wind no longer whispering in his ears, a quietness overtakes him, disturbed only by mild ringing. 

The bathroom mirror is small and dusty, but it does little to hide the alarm he feels when he finally looks at his reflection. He palms his flesh, pulling and twisting to get a better look at the tattoo that lines his neck, descending down and across his collar bones and his shoulders. 

Angry vines snake across his skin in red and black ink. Wilted flowers blooming between spaces of falling leaves. There is a red eye on each shoulder, and one at the base of his neck. Wide, unblinking, staring, not in the distance, but at something that has yet to happen. He splashes water on his face and leaves before taking a second look.

Who are you? Is a stupid question to have, but it’s the only one he can think of, and then maybe that he doesn’t even want to know.

What terrible thing did someone have to do to wind up buried six feet beneath frozen earth? What terrible thing did someone do to get their heart cut from their chest? But then, maybe he should be wondering how someone still rose to their feet after all that. That maybe, just maybe, it’d be worth it to find out. 

He can’t stay here much longer. 

Soon. A voice says only this time he knows it’s his own. A scarf hangs alone on a coat rack with no coats that he pulls on around his neck, and he pulls on the snow boots that rest unused as he opens the door. 

The wind is whistling, the snow falling slowly, the sun has long gone beneath a sky of deep gray. It looks like ash, covering the ground so that his footprints are completely erased and it's as if he's never been here.

Maybe he's a ghost.

Maybe he is something more.

The air is cool against his skin. He takes a breath and smiles as he steps forward. One step. Two steps... He doesn’t know what to expect when he reaches the end, but someone is calling his name.

That much he is sure of.