What Is Done

Chapter 37 - Wangji

We went two weeks without finding anything in No Man's Land. It was hard to hunt for something where nothing existed. There was a constant slurry of white. When there wasn't a storm, you still couldn't see too far ahead. We couldn't tell what direction we were going until Sellion made a makeshift compass that always pointed north.

We didn't know how close or far we were from the edge of No Man's Land. Maybe we'd gone in circles these past weeks. Maybe we'd traversed the entire mass of land.

I was beginning to lose hope after several long weeks of walking and not doing anything else. We huddled in the tent when sleeping to preserve body heat. I'm sure I didn't help. My body is as cold as the snow of No Man's Land. The foremost thing I did when setting my feet in No Man's Land was pull a fur-lined coat out of my stuff. I made sure Sellion and Essaerae were well prepared for this weather before we left Arün. I wondered if they could feel the lack of heat emanating from my body when we were close. We ate dried lettuce among other vegetarian options that were safe for traveling, but were beginning to run low. I was hoping we'd have found the sword by now. With its brilliant golden, fire-like glow, Firestarter would've been easy to spot among the haze.

Sellion brought up the possibility that it was still underwater, in a reef along the coast. The water would've given us hypothermia more than the air in No Man's Land. Sellion suggested we could hire fishermen to search for the prize and offer a large sum of money. Essaerae countered by saying the fishermen of Trench didn't come within ten miles of this place. They stayed where the fish didn't freeze to death moving three centimeters forward.

We were in the middle of walking while I listened to Essaerae and Sellion spout nonsense to each other like the children they acted like. Our feet were sluggish. Every few minutes we'd stomp the snow gathering on our boots off. It'd regather in another few. We all stopped when we saw firelight in the distance.

There was someone here.

At first, all three of us thought it was dragons. On approach, it was an old man. Another human looking to be near the end of his life. I wondered how he could stand this cold. Unless he was a block of ice and was already dead.

He sat facing the fire, leaning on a staff which was just a really long stick with hanging decorations on the end of it. He wore a cloak and clothes lined with thick animal fur. He didn't seem to have anything else. Nobody could survive out there without provisions, not even Sellion, who admitted he wouldn't even try to play survival without supplies in No Man's Land. There was nothing here. You couldn't live off the land. You could shove mounds of snow down your gullet but eventually die from hypothermia because of the coldness of said snow. Advice says to let snow melt before eating gobs of it to stave off dying of thirst but in No Man's Land, the chance of snow melting was as much of a chance as pigs flying. 

The old man stared as we approached him, all of us shivering. Our body heat wasn't enough in No Man's Land. Every time we took a break from walking, we started a fire with deadwood we'd found. Our fires were mostly sticks and driftwood. It was never a roaring bonfire. Any warmth was enough to temporarily forget the miserable situation we found ourselves in.

"Hello, all," the man mustered as he studied our faces. It sounded like he hadn't spoken in quite some time. His voice had cracked and croaked. I wouldn't have been surprised if he'd passed away while we held conversation with him.

"Hello," I said, shivering. I rubbed my biceps in my fur robe. My fur-lined gloves didn't keep the cold off my hands. The Arünian winter had never ever bothered me. I'd always run outside barefoot in the snow and my father would grab me and tell me to put on shoes before my toes froze off.

I am Laverne Ingerman. I was born in winter's pale. The weather of No Man's Land shouldn't have bothered me.

Yet it did.