Snow danced upon cold rivulets of air, eerily silent as small flakes drifted down towards the barren ground. The crystals blanketed upon one another until there was no sign of life. It was sterile, and it was cold. Everything was cold.
A distant memory were the fields of swaying green grass, topped at the crests by vibrant blooms and busy insects. The rustle of a soft forest canopy were simply an echo of times now passed. The once sweet odor of fruit and fresh rain were dispersed, now bitter and bitting.
Everything was hiding, even the sun it seemed.
Blizzard treaded carefully on the thin crust of the snow, wincing every time her paws broke through the ice-hardened layer. Tendrils of breath wreathed around her neck like a Servine, threatening to choke her with non existent force. The jagged shadows of bare trees covered her bloodied white fur with grey stripes, lightened by the lack of visible sun.
The creaking branches arching above were Blizzard's only indication that she was still present, that the world was still going on, even if she was suffering.
Her wound had long dried, crusted over by blood. But it pulsed with heat, and it still hurt. She wasn't sure what had happened to her, why she felt sick and tired all the time. Why she felt cold. She wasn't supposed to be cold, she wasn't supposed to miss the heat of summer. The flakes catching in her soiled pelt felt more like claws than a comfort. It was bizarre. But she couldn't think, her mind was muddled, her gaze dull and half blind.
And she was grieving.
She didn't have him anymore to take care of her, he was gone. And she had left him there to rot. It had happened so fast, so suddenly. The cities humans had built seemed to collapse in just a day as sickness blistered through the population. Her dear Aki had been one of the first to fall, and she had run.
In her retreat, something had wounded her. She hadn't seen what, but for days she wandered about in a daze, stomach bleeding, until she arrived in the woods.
Everything she encountered was dead or dying. And she was dying, she knew it. It tugged at the back of her mind, insistent, but not scary. Was it worth it? It had to be. But she couldn't help herself, couldn't stop herself from dying. She didn't even know how to take care of herself.
And if everything else had died, why hadn't she yet? Blizzard didn't even have the energy to shiver, to try and find food. Time flew past in a daze, but she was almost certain not even a week had passed. She just walked.
And she walked.
Original publication: November 1, 2018
Rewrite: January 9, 2021
YOU ARE READING
Blizzard Heart -A Pokemon Fanfiction-
Fanfiction(Cover by @SteelSkarmoryKate) Blizzard is dying. Like everything around her.
