In the Bleak Midwinter..

[Etherious Virgil]

Trauma Narrative
The events of Somir's childhood play out in the form of a recurring nightmare. He is unaware that these events actually took place, due to his amnesia; however, the effects of these events have left him with a subconscious fear of blizzards. He associates them purely with death, and tries to avoid blizzard-like conditions at all costs, and will even break down and have a severe panic attack if he is forced into the midst of one.

Total of 116 Sentences, resulting in 29 paragraphs for claim purposes
Total of 5,800 XP

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan. Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone. Snow had fallen. Snow, on snow, on snow. In the bleak midwinter. Long, long ago. The dream came on as it had many nights before. Somir had no memory of the night the events had taken place, and thought them nothing more than nightmares that plagued him all these years. Tonight was like every other in that sense.

His eyes shot open, blinded momentarily by a white void before him. A few steps would be taken before the void shattered apart and was replaced by a rapid flurry of white flakes. He could feel the cold on his skin. Piercing him to the bone. Somir was in a child’s body, one that was no match for the freezing temperatures swirling around him. To his left was the makings of some sort of camp. To his right were men, one much older than the other. They were arguing. The howling winds made it impossible to make out any noise. Hands flew in various directions, their gestures indicating that they were referencing the child that Somir had inhabited, and whatever lay beyond the busy wall of ice and snow.

Snow crunched beneath their boots as they approached the boy. They spoke to him in soft tones, but loud enough that he could hear. He felt as if he could understand what they were saying, but their words weren’t in any language that Somir knew. It was as if the information he was given by them was garbled and backwards. However, despite that, an uneasy feeling filled his empty stomach. Reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in seemingly days. The trio would leave the campsite, travelling into the unknown. The conditions presented to them by the blizzard were unfavorable. Vision was severely restricted, and the deep snow not only made it hard to move, but threatened to leave them with frostbite in their lower extremities.

The older man walked a bit further ahead than the other two. He seemed to have more experience with this situation than the other man did. They walked on for what seemed like forever. By this point Somir couldn’t feel anything below his face, and even then he could only feel the stinging kiss of the wind on his cheeks. All at once, the group stopped moving. The elderly man bent down to inspect something he had stumbled across, he turned to his two companions with a look of fear and worry. The other man, beside Somir, shared the fearful expression. When he angled himself to try and see what had caused the change in their mood, he saw the mangled carcass of a large elk and red-stained snow. The snow around the body had melted slightly. It was a fresh kill.

The two men began to usher Somir in the direction they had come from. They did not want to be in that area any further. And much like all the other nights that Somir had this dream, they would not get far. A sound broke through the wails of the storm, low at first, but gradually growing in volume and intensity. A powerful roar in the distance. The creature, given the intensity of its cries, was very large. A predator that thrived in these conditions. The men waved their arms at Somir for him to run with them as they picked up the pace of their escape. A thundering chase resounded from a location they could not see. The silhouette of a creature many times Somir’s size painted itself against the blizzard. It was walking, not running, to their side. It was enjoying the hunt, studying its prey. The group broke to the other side, trying to gain some distance away from the monster.

The creature took that moment to pounce. It’s body tore through the flurry in a blur. Somir could faintly make out a mix of fur and scales as it passed by him. Panic ripped through his body when the creature’s maw collapsed around the older man’s head. And all at once, the creature vanished into the blizzard, taking its meal along with it. Somir and the remaining male made another change in direction. Whether that decision was wise or not was up for debate. The creature had disappeared in the direction they had been moving, but beasts were not known for moving only in a single direction. It could just as easily change its course as they had. The man was yelling over the howls of the wind, urging Somir to keep up.

His joints felt as if they would disintegrate if he kept moving, but fear would not let him slow the advance. Somir’s blood rushed in his ears from the adrenaline. The only saving grace was that he could no longer feel the cold at this point. Everything felt so real, it was easy to forget that it was a nightmare. In the waking world, Somir’s body was breaking out in cold sweats and he was tossing about frantically. However, he wouldn’t be free of this torment yet. As his childlike body turned his focus left and right, looking for any signs of the behemoth that had taken the old man, another blur of movement sprang forth from the falling snow. Claws passed by Somir, close enough that he could have stuck his tongue out to taste the leftover crimson of the beast’s last meal.

It’s massive paw collided into the last remaining adult of their party, and kept sailing forward back into the drifts. The man’s torso had been gouged open from behind. The tears in his flesh poured thick liquid onto the fallen snow, and the entrails that had been torn loose threatened to join its nectar on the ground. The man’s arm, after a few seconds of stunned realization, drooped downward before separating from his body. He turned to face Somir, pale as a ghost. In a last moment of clarity he painfully rushed to Somir. Using his one good arm, he tossed his pack off of his shoulder and thrust it into Somir’s hands. Then, with one forceful shove, knocked him out of the way of the second strike. Whether the sheer power of the creature had caused it, or if one of its claws had raked through flesh and bone, it ended the man’s life. Decapitated by the unnamed predator. His head rolled along the snow until it rested at Somir’s feet.

His first instinct was to vomit, nausea building up bile in the back of his throat at the sight. However, this wasn’t the time for that. He had only this one chance to escape. With the bag in his hands, he ran away from the location, back into the snow. Time in dreams was already hard to make sense of, but this was different. It felt as if a portion of time was repeated endlessly. He had stopped running, but his feet still carried him. Far, far away from the horrorshow behind him. Luckily, it seemed that the monster that had taken away the two men wasn’t interested in such a small quarry. However, a new dilemma presented itself. He was lost in the snow, in the middle of the blizzard, as a child. He had no food, no shelter, and only a bag that he was unsure of the contents of. His stomach groaned a plea for nourishment, but he had nothing to fill it with. He felt as if he would cry, but no tears came. Even if they had, they would likely freeze upon contact with the air, meeting the ground as crystalline drops.

This scene was getting old. There was no change in the surrounding area aside from varying sizes and shapes in the snow piled on the ground. Yet, it was not over quite yet. A few more moments passed, feeling like hours in the nightmare, before a faint light broke through the whipping flakes. He moved towards it, desperately picking up his pace. He was closer now, able to tell that the light was coming from a candle, likely on the windowsill of a cabin. That meant a warm place to rest and get help. How naive. Genuine excitement? No, he knew better. He had dreamt this before. He only had to move forward a few more yards. He reached a hand out, almost as if doing so would help him touch the cabin sooner. Then, the sound of beating wings broke overhead. In a flash of talons, he was lifted from the ground, carried away from salvation. The nightmare would be over soon, as he would fight with the thief who had stolen him away from the snow, high into the air. He kicked and punched as much as he could and then…. It dropped him. His body plummeted, down towards the earth. At this height, he would surely die. Then, right before he landed, Somir jolted and shot up, finally free from the nightmare.