Annaliese

One

Steadying the bow and arrow and aiming it at an ibex about twenty yards away, Annaliese took a deep breath, pulling back on the bow string. As she exhaled, she released it, the fine string slipping from her fingers. The sharpened arrow head pierced the animal through the eye, instantly killing it. Sterling, a lynx that Annaliese had befriended about three years ago, ran to the fallen ibex's side and waited patiently for Anna. Annaliese stood in her perch and dusted the white snow off of her jacket, jogging over and hog-tied the ibex's legs together and letting out a length of rope to drag it back to her cave with. It was about a one and a half mile walk back to her home, so it took her about fifteen minutes to get there. Harsh wind started to bite at her exposed skin as she pushed back the heavy curtain of animal skins to reveal her cave with a fire cracking merrily in the center and a makeshift bed to the right.

She sat at the fire cross-legged, warming her cold hands before taking her knife and skinning the ibex while humming a song to herself. Sterling curled up at her side and fell asleep while Anna set a couple slabs of meat on a makeshift skillet over her fire and throwing the waste outside. She put the rest of the usable meat in a bag of animal skin and setting it just outside of her cave in the blizzard so that it wouldn't spoil. After letting the meat cook for a while, she ate her dinner, rousing Sterling to give him a slice of meat and a couple of bones. As the night came, Anna propped herself up against the cave wall and started to scrape her knife across the skin of the ibex to make another blanket or addition to her curtain. Her cave wasn't very big, only about fifteen feet deep and thirteen feet wide, but the space was used well. Her bed was on the left, taking up about a quarter of the cave, and she had a compartment for clothing and to change in. In front of the closet compartment was the fire and the rest of the space was used up by extra skins.

The only reason that Annaliese had extra clothes was because when the crash happened, she had found her suitcase and her mothers alongside her and brought them with her. She wore her mothers clothing now. As she sat and skinned the animal, her thoughts drifted back to the crash. Her parents and her had gone on vacation to Turkey, but their private jet had crashed, killing the pilots and her parents. Somehow, she had survived using her powers which allowed Annaliese to communicate with animals and control plants. The Newmans had been working on creating something to help the human race, and just before they had left to go back to America, they had given Annaliese a serum that gave her her powers.

After nearly completing half of the ibex skin, Annaliese decided to go to sleep, building up the fire and laying down next to a snoring Sterling on her bed.

===

Wanda sighed as she watched the snowy mountains pass by quickly. "We're getting close," Steve said flatly from the pilots seat.

"What's wrong, Steve?" Sam asked, not looking up from his Solitaire game on the floor of the jet.

"I think this is a wild goose chase. No one can survive in the Alps for twelve years alone, enhanced or not. We'll probably only find a couple of antelope and be sent back to the compound with nothing but snow in our hair."

"Someone had grumpy cereal for breakfast this morning," Sam joked.

Wanda laughed as Steve rolled his crystal blue eyes. "Here it is. Tony said that she might be in a cave after all these years."

No one really expected to find anything here, it was mostly just a mission to see if they could find the crash and whatever the Newman's were working on before the accident. If they found Annaliese Newman, then it would be a miracle. The jet slowly touched down and Wanda winced as she felt the harsh snow bite and her exposed face. The last time she had felt this cold was when Pietro and her still lived in Sokovia. Neither of the men that were with her seemed to mind the cold, so they started trekking through the snow as best they could. "Wanda?" Steve called, his voice muffled by the snow. "Can you clear the blizzard from us so that we can see where we're going?"