In the firelight

Trigger warning: PTSD

A scratching at her door made Joan look up from her smashing. She smiled. It only meant that Astra was back from her hunt. She glanced out the window and to her surprise, saw it had started to storm again, with the wind howling around her house, and snow piling up. Joan had been so absorbed in her writing that she hadn’t even realized it. She jogged to the door, grabbing a towel on the way. Astra would be soaking wet.

As Joan opened the door, Astra squeezed past in a hurry, shaking herself dry and in the same movement, coating Joan in a quickly melting sheen of snow. Astra dropped something and sat down, waiting patiently to be welcomed and dried off. Joan did both. But after being dried off, instead of going and lying by the fire as she usually did, Astra sat and looked with big blue eyes at Joan. When Joan just watched her, Astra picked up the object she had dropped and put it in Joan’s hands. It was a black snow glove. Astra looked expectantly at Joan and then at the door. This was the type of silent communication they always shared. It meant this: there was someone out in the snowstorm and Astra thought that Joan should be the one to save them. Joan shook her head and dropped the glove. It was their fault in the first place to get stuck in a storm like this. Besides, the storm would continue to rage, and Joan would end up being stuck in it as well. And maybe the most deciding factor was that it included human interaction.

Astra didn’t want to leave it. As Joan went to go make herself a cup of sweet tea, Astra followed, glove in her mouth, with pleading eyes. Even as she got back to typing Astra pleaded her. When, twenty minutes later, Astra didn’t leave it, and was still standing pleading Joan next to her chair, Joan reluctantly gave up with the decision to go and at least investigate the glove’s owner. She donned her coat and gloves and snowshoes, and set out the door.

The snow wasn’t falling as heavily as it had before. Her and Astra’s footprints wouldn’t disappear completely for an hour or so. Easy to find their way back. Astra led the way, happy that her friend had finally agreed. After about five minutes or so, Astra stopped short and started digging. Joan joined her. A few inches underneath the snow was a type of material that seemed to belong to a jacket. And the glove’s owner.

After scraping most of the hard snow off, Joan rolled the body out of the snow. It belonged to a man of about 30, whose face was white, and nose was on the way to turning blue. Joan put two fingers under the man’s scarf and was surprised to find a pulse. People usually didn’t last too long out in a snowstorm. The man groaned and his eyes half flickered open, and then shut again. Semi-conscious. Joan figured that it would be cruel to leave him here and Astra would never stop complaining, so she hoisted him up, with his arm around her shoulder and started the long trek back to her cabin.

When Will Hughman woke up, he was confused. Last he looked, he was in the middle of a snowstorm, freezing half to death, with a wolf waiting to eat his body. Or at least he thought that’s what happened, but it was all a hazy blur. Now he was warm and lying on something soft. He stared at something that was glowing opposite him, trying to focus his eyes. After a few minutes, his eyesight returned to him and the glowing was a fire in a fireplace. He tried to move, but he was so stiff it was agonizing pain. He groaned and stopped moving. After the pain had subsided, he tried again. This time it went a little easier. Yet all he could manage was to roll over and to face the fireplace. That’s when he noticed the wolf. Lying in front of the fire. Watching him. He started to panic and called out. Will’s logic returned to him and he realized if it hadn’t eaten him yet, it wouldn’t now. The wolf was simply lying there. Besides that, it was inside a house. As he watched it, the wolf raised itself to its feet and padded away. A few moments later, a woman appeared. “Where am I?” Will managed to mumble. The woman didn’t reply but looked at him with wide eyes. She left again. Will was too exhausted to keep his eyes open another second. He fell asleep within seconds again.

Looking after the man, felt like looking after an injured animal to Joan. And she had looked after plenty of those, Astra being the main one. She had tried to release Astra back to the wild when she was old enough, but Astra had grown too fond of her and came back scratching endlessly at the door until Joan had let her in. Astra hadn’t learnt most of the skills cubs learn from their parents. Which is why Astra lived with her now. Her parents had been shot by hikers walking with guns. That incident didn’t help Joan’s distrust of people. But looking after the man was like looking after Astra when she first came. That was until he spoke. It caught her off guard, and she needed a moment to calm herself and figure out what to do next. It was just like looking after an injured animal, right? A speaking one at that, but no different. Which meant that the next step was to feed him. She had been cooking up some soup. That would probably work. It was just about ready. She scooped up some soup into a bowl, then thought better of it and poured it into a cup. It was mostly liquid anyway. Before she went back to the couch he was lying on, she grabbed a whiteboard and a marker. She crouched down in front of him and shook him gently. He opened his eyes and mumbled something she couldn’t quite understand. She wrote something down on the whiteboard.

The woman was back again. She showed Will a whiteboard with a few words written on it. You need to sit up and eat. Will tried to speak again, but only managed a mumble. “I can’t.” He couldn’t muster any energy to sit up. The woman looked at him with empathetic eyes, and her eyes somehow showed what she was thinking. She wanted to help him sit up. He nodded. Through a great effort on his part, she helped Will to sit up. Suddenly Will realized that he didn’t have any clothes on. He was naked except for the blankets that covered him, all of which fell to his lap as he sat up, exposing his bare chest to the elements. He couldn’t lift them up. The woman seemed unfazed. She covered and wrapped him in the blankets again, then showed him the whiteboard again. He nodded.

To Joan’s surprise, it was easier than she had expected. The man seemed grateful, although uncomfortable. He didn’t seem like the people she knew. She helped him eat and lie down again, and because of the effort, he was out again. Joan pulled the blankets around him and pulled her beanie lower down his head and forehead. He had had a bad case of hypothermia, and it was the recovery that would be the hardest. If they were in an easier accessible place and had radio reception, she would have called for ambulance, or rather a helicopter. But that was out of the question, so she made do with what was in her cabin. Blankets, a fire, remove wet clothing, and a hot water bottle. She was surprised that it had worked and that he was still alive. Joan ate some of the soup herself and added a few logs to the fire, so it would burn until the morning.

The next time Will woke, he felt some energy return to him. He was not yet able to sit up on his own, but he could look around freely without too much effort. The wolf was next to the fire again. And after a while the woman appeared again. She helped him sit up and gave him some soup again. This time, he was determined to know where he was and who she was. After Will had finished his soup he asked, “Where am I?” She disappeared and reappeared with the whiteboard. When she finished writing and held it up, he read in my cabin in Alaska. Memories came flooding back. He nodded. “What happened?” She looked nervous at the question, or maybe the situation itself. Wiping her sleeve over the board, she wrote something else down. Astra found you in the middle of a snowstorm. I brought you back. “Thank you.” She seemed to be too scared to talk. Will didn’t mind. “Who is Astra?” he said as an afterthought. The woman pointed at the wolf. So, a tame wolf? “And who are you?” She took a deep breath. My name is Joan. she wrote. “Nice to meet you Joan, I’m Will.” She nodded in greeting. What are you doing here Will? She asked. “I was on a hike. I lost the trail and then got caught in the snowstorm.” He answered.

It was a last-minute decision to go hiking in Alaska. A friend secured him a ticket and residence. He had set out the day after he arrived with a mission to sleep in one of the ice caves that coated the mountains. He had somehow missed the path and next thing he knew he was lost. He tried to retrace his steps, but they had already been covered up. And it got colder and colder, and the cold clouded his mind. He must have at one point ditched his backpack and walked until he dropped. The ice caves? “Yes.” The conversation had tired him out and he felt his eyelids start to droop despite trying to stay awake. Joan sensed this and helped him lie down gently. He was asleep within seconds.

Joan sat down to write again. But she couldn’t stop thinking about Will. He seemed gentle and kind and somehow unfazed with the fact that Joan couldn’t talk. He just took it into stride. Could she have stereotyped the whole of humanity wrong? No, she told herself. It couldn’t be, he was going to turn mean any second. Once he was awake and recovered. She should’ve never let him into her cabin.

Days went by, and Will slowly regained his strength, and nothing in the way he acted towards her changed, and yet Joan remained distrustful. The conversation flowed more freely, and she learned about his past and present. Will was now able to stand and walk around the room. And able to use the bucket on his own.

It was 14 days after Joan had found Will. They were having a conversation about Will’s brother Jack, and Joan was sitting with her whiteboard on the floor, while Will was on the couch. It was night-time and the fire cast the room in a warm glow, joined only by the flickering candles at various intervals in the room. At a break in the conversation, Will decided to get up and stretch. He raised his hand above his head and puffed his chest out, yawning. When he finished and opened his eyes again, he saw Joan. She had curled up into a tight ball and was shaking and breathing heavily. She kept muttering something inaudible between short breaths. Her eyes were shut, and she was rocking back and forth in her position.

Will recognized what had happened immediately. It was a PTSD flashback. And he had triggered it by getting up without warning and lifting his hands above his head. His sister had PTSD and he had helped her through many, many flashbacks. He mad at himself for causing one. Gently Will bent down and spoke in a soft, low voice “It’s Will, there is no danger, you’re at home in your cabin. Astra is out hunting; she’ll be back soon.” She stopped mumbling, as if she were listening. He sat down next to her and continued to speak, being careful to be quiet and not to be too close. “It’s okay, it’s safe here, no one is going to hurt you. We are just going to try a breathing exercise okay?” She still didn’t respond.

Will saw tears fall down her face and his heart felt raw. Whatever she went through. She didn’t deserve it. “Just follow my breathing okay?” He started to breathe audibly in and out for four counts and continued when he saw her imitating him. When her breathing had calmed, he slowly reached for a box of tissues that were conveniently on the table beside him. Her eyes went from tightly shut to fluttering open and closed. “It’s okay, you’re safe here. You’re at home in your cabin.” He repeated.

 Tears were still flowing freely from her face and dripping into the carpet below them. He tried his next technique that had helped his sister ground herself every time it happened. “Joan, it’s me, Will, I need you to open your eyes and-“ He hesitated, he was going to say tell me what you see, but he remembered she hadn’t ever said a word before, she would do it way less now. “—point to what you see.” Joan, still rolled into a ball, opened her eyes, and blinked a few times. “Point to what you see.” She uncurled one arm and pointed to the couch. “Good, good. Now point to another thing you see.” She pointed a shaking finger to the carpet. “That’s perfect. Can you hear my voice?” after a few moments, she nodded. “Focus on my voice and what you see. Now do you feel the carpet under you?” A hesitant hand slid to the carpet and felt the rough warmth of it. She nodded again. “That’s good. That’s good. You’re safe, you’re in your cabin. You’re safe.” He repeated.

Then another thought occurred to him. “Can I touch you?” He asked hesitantly. After a few moments of silence, she nodded. He slowly moved closer to her and gently put his hand on her shoulder. The muscles were tensed, but they relaxed under his soft touch. This gave him confidence and he gently moved and encircled her lightly in his arms. A warm, open embrace which didn’t make her feel trapped. He stayed there and slowly the crying stopped and she relaxed into his arms. He offered her a tissue, the box of which he had put down next to him. She took one and blew her nose, loudly, making him laugh softly. “It’s okay now. You’re safe.” He said again. And there they sat, on the carpet in the firelight in a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Joan sat in Will’s warm arms and felt tears prickling at the corners of her eyes. Except these were a different type of tears. They were happy tears. She had never felt loving soft human contact, and she did not realize how much she craved it, until Will came along. It felt good. It felt right. When she had more or less fully recovered, she grabbed her whiteboard and marker. She wrote the words Thank you on it, Will said softly “It’s the least I can do.” They held each other for as long as Will could stay awake, or rather, until Joan insisted he must rest. He was asleep within seconds.

Joan was surprised to say the least. Will had not only been kind, but also managed to help her out of her flashback. He was kind and soft and comforting. It made her wonder if maybe not everyone was that bad, or if she happened upon one in a million.

Days passed from the incident, and Joan and Will grew closer. She started to trust him. He enjoyed her company, quick thinking and caring nature. Will had grown strong enough to go on short hikes with her and Astra, and she showed him all the hidden beauties of the snowy forests and fields. The short hikes grew longer and longer and, Will knew that he would be strong enough to hike back. His family and friends would be worried sick, and yet he did not want to leave. Torn between the two options, Will opted for a third. He would ask Joan to hike with him to his friend’s residence and so he could call and let his friends and family know he was okay. Then maybe, he might just stay.

And stay he did. Joan was reluctant to come with him, but he convinced her he would be there for her the whole time, and she didn’t need to be under any type of stress. They came back together. And over time, slowly but surely Joan’s scars started to heal. The memories started to fade as new ones were created. She still could not speak, but it didn’t bother her much because it didn’t bother Will. They both decided to learn sign language and were soon talking freely without the use of a whiteboard. Joan gained hope in people again and even went with Will to visit his family. And their friendship bloomed into love. And their love only grew deeper and stronger. It was pure and real. It wasn’t a miraculous recovery that Joan made after that night on the floor. There were worse nights, but Will stayed by her side, and helped her through thick and thin. But she would never forget that first night as he held her there in the firelight.