Upon a New World

Prologue

Alright, you know the drill: I never wanted to be a half-blood, close this story because once they find out you'll be hunted for the rest of your life, yaddi yadda. But, hear me out, I hate being a half-blood, more than I can put into words. So sit tight and hear my story, but be warned, once you find out, be prepared to answer the door.

My story starts in a lonely snowy cabin deep in the Alaskan wilderness. The cabin was small with an open living room connected to the kitchen. There's only one bedroom which was decorated sparsely by a bookshelf riddled with fairy tales and myths. A flame in the living room slowly whittles like a dried-up flower, tomorrow is firewood day anyway. Today is hunting day. The scope of my Winchester is aimed at a lone caribou, taking care not to alert any wild bears. The ringing in my ears eventually faded as I obtained my newest game. The rifle surprisingly had little recoil and always felt light despite its powerful calibre. I skinned the caribou and brought whatever I could back home. Whether I liked it or not, the meat will have to last me till next week. Winter was coming and food would become more scarce. Most of it goes to waste anyway.

Apart from the constant struggle for survival, it gets pretty boring up here in Alaska, with nothing but endless snow in winters and temperate summers. I often played and talked with myself and the dark walls of my cabin. Well, not to mention the occasional house spider, which always seemed adamant about annoying me. I've read every book that was on my shelf and again, and the words always stayed the same. If you ask me why I never left well, it's because I'd get lost easily, I never leave the sight of my home and I don't have a map. I used to have a map but I lost it somehow. It disappeared the same day my father left me forever. And here I am boiling a chunk of caribou meat and drying the rest above the fireplace. My father, in all I could remember, was a kind yet strange man and somewhat arrogant I'd say. He decided to raise a child all by himself in the harsh wilderness of Alaska, without much outside help. My mother, however, I have very little memory of, but my dad always told stories about her. Whenever I asked about my mother he would always smile and tell me "I was born headstrong", he would then chuckle as if it was a joke, I never got it. I wished I could meet her someday, my dad shared the same enthusiasm, but a splash of pessimism always remained in his eyes. Now you might be wondering why a child is alone out in the Alaskan wilderness. Well don't worry, I'll get there. Memories of my father are somewhat hazy, but I remembered those lessons he taught me about life, language, and guns, even if they had little value.

But I will always remember that morning, the morning I awoke devoid of any warmth beside me. I like many naive children probably would, sat patiently for his return, but hours passed and he never did. Starved the next morning, I set out in pursuit to find him, but he never told me to venture further than where I could see the cabin. I yelled for him, but only Echo was listening as she cried the same words back to me as if she were mocking me. For the first time that I could remember, I wept. I cried out to him, for him to come back and that I was sorry, not sure what I was sorry for but I guessed something was wrong with me. I cried for my father and my mother, but neither came.

I ate whatever I could find in the cabinets to satisfy my ravish hunger, foolishly might I add. Food ran out pretty quickly, obviously and I would have to find it myself. The Winchester rifle stood on the display above the fireplace as if to call out to me, to comfort me. Its slim design and intricate wooden texture felt smooth and perfect in my hands. My father's lessons luckily came naturally to me, I was quickly able to hunt hares, but I had no idea how to cook them. I resorted to eating some raw, which was a terrible idea that I would have slapped myself for. Firewood luckily wasn't that hard to find, on top of the available supply the only difficult bit was cutting but I managed. Although, strangely I never ran out of cartridges, after every month I always end up with another box full of them. Days turned to weeks turned to months, probably from sheer dumb luck. And now it has been two years since I was left alone and counting.