Cold Front | Paul Lahote

preface

The wind was piercing as it cut through her delicate skin, ice and snow whipped against her. Tripping and pushing her way forward, she slipped when her foot made contact with solid ice. Taking a moment to steady herself, she continued over the frozen water. 

"James!" her voice echoed around her despite the whistling of the wind. 

Her brother hadn't returned home in a fortnight. Fear prickled in her heart at the possibility of her brother being hurt. Her health was not something she cared about anymore. Out of all the times that herself and James had traveled, he had never gone tracking when their was a storm of this magnitude. He was always smart and cautious yet she knew he would never survive the storm. 

She had learnt to track along side her brother from a young age, and even if he was better then she was, she could not work out a scenario in which he survived this. 

Her cheeks burned from the cold and her fingers felt numb as she gripped her furs closer to herself for warmth. 

She waked slowly over the ice, she had fallen multiple times trying to reach the other. Her knees and hands were bound to have cut, bruises at the least. 

"James!" she cried out. "Where are you?"

Stumbling forward, she felt her foot land wrong. She didn't dare move as she heard the cracks of ice around her. 

Wiling the ice to stand strong, she attempted to back up. 

Gasping, she felt the ice break as she fell in to the water. 

Struggling upward, she willed herself to reach the air above her. Her mind flashed through a million scenarios, a million ways that she could save herself but none would work. 

The water burned at first, but it eventually dulled out, turning to an aching sting in her lungs. 

When she had left the small room her brother had rented, she had never calculated for a lake, or for the ice cracking. In this moment, she thought it easier to just swim down. 

Her mind was hazy as her vision grew dark. She had nothing more than a few minutes left but it didn't scare her. Drowning wasn't her ideal way to die but it would have been better than freezing alive like she would have done had she gotten herself out of the water. 

She had closed her eyes as a hand clamped in a deathly grip around her shoulder. Her mind refuse to process it as the situation played over n her head. 

Crimson eyes stared down at er in worry.

"Erica." 

His eyes weren't  his eyes and his voice wasn't his voice. His face wasn't his face, but it was. He looked the same but he didn't. 

Her eyes burned as fire filled her veins. In her mind she was dead and this was surely hell. 

"James," she whimpered.

"Erica, all will be well soon." 

••••• 

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