My face burned from the cold.
The wind shook my bones.
Each step I made was focused and deliberate, yet ungraceful. My worn sneakers slipped on the ice.
The only light in the sky came from the stars, but the snow on the ground glared bright enough to see.
I walked quickly, and although I had no idea where I was going, I was aimed.
The voice I heard was female. But I couldn't make out the words or even the language. Still, I was alone except for that voice, calling in the distance.
I had never been so cold as I was just a few minutes before. It was a thousand pins poking me on every piece of my flesh. But, by that moment--the moment I walked quickly toward the stranger's voice--the pain was becoming manageable.
It still hurt, to be sure. My bones ached. But the pins were gone. Or, at least, I couldn't feel them as numbness set in.
Snow fell lightly.
The voice had been calling in intervals, regular enough to keep me in the right direction, but then it had stopped. So I stopped.
I called out loudly, "Hello! Where are you?"
I shivered violently as I stood. I put my hands under my t-shirt against my skin. I couldn't feel anything from my hands or my stomach. I shoved my hands down my pants and reached between my thighs. I still had some feeling down there.
"Over here!" called the voice.
"Keep yelling!" I yelled.
I dragged my hands up and down along my thighs. My hands were knives of ice slicing my last vestige of feeling. I let go and scrunched my hands into fists and loosened them in a desperate attempt to regain some feeling.
I started walking again, quicker and with more motivation. The voice was nearer.
"Over here!"
The flat terrain began to turn into a downward slope and my steps grew ungraceful.
My sneaker lost its grip, and I fell sideways into the snow. The pins were still there, and the few that I felt were like burning matches.
I smacked my hands into the snow to push myself back up.
"Over here!"
That wasn't the same voice. I was close enough then to tell that there were two different voices calling.
I plopped my feet hard on the ground on each step, demanding traction.
Snot and drool had turned to ice on my face.
Finally, I saw a light to the distance.
"Over here!" came from the light.
I started throwing my feet down, one by one, wobbling quickly, like a toddler.
The light was getting closer, but ever so slowly. I tried to push through the snow as quickly as I could.
The only thing I wanted at that moment was to get to the light. A near-consensus in my mind told me it would be the place I die, but a relentless hopeful brain cell stood up against the crowd to say that there would be help there.
So, mostly expecting death, I ran like a drunkard toward the light with two voices. Out of shape, I gasped for air.
I fell again, tumbling down the hill.
I rolled to my side and tried to bring my hips underneath, but they were stuck.
My hand was planted in the snow. It wobbled and blurred. I leaned into my arm, but it collapsed. I fell to my chest.
My chin rested in the snow. My eyes shook. It was the only thing I felt. The rest of me didn't shiver anymore.
I couldn't move. I didn't know how.
But somehow, I was moving. I felt... something, somewhere. I wasn't sure what or where it was.
The ground moved away from my face, and my sneakers went under me.
I tried to remember how to step, but I couldn't. My nerves couldn't feel the feeling of sending the message to my legs. It was like trying to move a distant object with my mind. Yet, my feet were moving like someone else was controlling them.
The light was near.
A voice mumbled gibberish to my left and another to my right.
Then all I could see was the light, growing larger.
