Year one, November
To be alone, truly, is not to know where the sky ends and land begins; for silence to be so deafening it causes you to scream out and clasp your palms over your ears, for you to want for nothing more than a single lone word of a stranger, just to let you know you are alive. You hope to stumbled, fall, bleed – just to feel something. Anything.
Every day Hiroshi Mirrai woke to the same bleached white sky; the forest around him was as thick and as dark as deer-fur, but equally: as bare and isolated as his heart. He was not born in this desolate place - way back in his memory he can picture colour and feel warmth, yet all the fades to icy snow. He used to believe someday they'd return, someday they'd remember him, that one day they'd save him from the silence.
But that day never came...
He still sat on these same splintered steps they would play on as children, the memory - ghosts of them all running around him with joyous expressions of delight as he continued to shiver and freeze. This village was never a crowded place, yet now that it was empty he realised just how warm the smiles of those who had lived here truly were. That the music they played and the sweet foods they'd make were a true blessing to his senses that he wish he could feel again.
Yes, it was once warm in this woeful winter wonderland. They would sing and dance, hunt and cook, smile and wave - and never once did Hiroshi feel alone. For they were one and that was that.
But when man came from the south they saw the lands and envied the tribe's freedom, proceeding to drive away their deer and hunt their rabbits that used to hop so freely through the early spring snow. They cut their trees and shot their birds, but still, they survived, yet, beneath the smiles that continued to reign over their faces, their spirits were breaking and in their hearts, they knew...
...their world was ending, and there was nothing they could do to stop it.
They continued to struggle past starvation and hunt further from the camps in order to survive. Occasionally a hunter would vanish, but they knew that was a risk of their job to provide for the village. Gradually, however; more people began to disappear in the night, a young hunter, a charmed girl, a woman bearing a child without name - sometimes even a whole family would vanish from this place, leaving nothing but an empty hut and a hole in his own heart. Then one day he left to hunt – he lived alone with his sister you see, a fragile sickly girl who hadn't left the house in years. They had no parents, no one to miss them, therefore he was the only one capable of finding food.
So he left as the sun rose in the greyish-white sky; a bow at his back and dagger in his belt, trudging out through the snow drifts with his hood drawn low and his scarf drawn high. He still remembered the deathly silence that day, the silence he'd now been trapped in for what felt like an eternity. But he continued on, his tracks little more than concaving drag marks through the deep powered white snow. The wind was wild and chilling that day, screaming its whispers of warning as it weaved through the pine. For hours he walked, and now he knew he should've just returned; then he would know where they went...
...then he would know why they left him
He returned in the night; the wind at his back, pushing him home to the dead lights and abandoned shacks of wood. No one was left, not a soul not a whisper. They were all gone. As he ran to his house with frozen tears in his eyes at the window Hiroshi saw the pale faced fragile form of his sister. Like a ghost behind the glass her hair that of angel feathers and eyes of ice. He went in, holding her in his arms as he cried.
She did not speak, she just stood there, her hand as soft as silk as it ran through his hair. They were the ones they forgot that day, the ones they left as they went to start new lives in a new world, the ones that would fade like the snow they had left.
They were abandoned...
To this day he have continued to survive, not wishing to give up the memories of this place. In many ways he was the last of his kind, sat alone in the forever snows of the pristine land.
Maybe it wasn't so bad..?
Although he wished they'd come back...
he wanted to play tag one more time before...
"Hiroshi..." A soft angelic voice called lightly across the wind. The boy looked up, unable to see anything but her ice blue eyes, nor could he feel the shivering of his tired limbs.
So tired...
Just wanting to...
"Tag.." She smiled, the words ringing through his ears as his eyes close and his body slumped.
Sleep...
He can feel her; warm once more, a light like no other.
Kiko... now you and your brother may both shine forever more...
Hiro Mirrai had forgotten in his despair. He had forgotten that his sister was not sickly. No, she was not frail, not any longer. She had passed many moons ago, only returning when his time had come. Kiko was her brother's reaper, she would welcome him to the next world in peace.
With a smile as delicate as the snowflakes outside, He lay himself down beside her...
