Chapter Text
It wasn’t unusual for her to wake to noises. The bedroom window was always cracked open—just enough for the world to seep in. Windchimes tapping against each other. Leaves rustling in trees. The distant growl of a delivery truck rolling past at dawn. Sometimes it was a wild dog losing its mind at nothing but the moon.
More often than not, it was YouTube. She had a terrible habit of falling asleep with her laptop open on her chest—documentaries murmuring into the night. Video essays drifting into autoplay.
What was new was the taste of dirt. It sat thick and mineral-heavy on her tongue. She grimaced without opening her eyes. Morning breath was one thing. This felt like she’d eaten a potted plant.
She tried to remember if she even made it to brushing her teeth last night. She remembered a bowl of cereal balanced precariously on the mattress. Some kind of hour-long documentary about shipwrecks. She vaguely remembered promising herself she’d get up in a minute. But not the action or taste of brushing her teeth.
Maybe she hadn’t; maybe she had faceplanted into the dying cactus on her nightstand that she kept forgetting about. That would be embarrassing.
She inhales as she turns in bed.
Cold air burns her lungs. Not the ‘cool-bedroom-window’ air. Not the ‘winter-draft-sneaking-under-the-door’ air. Frigid and freezing air that slices through her haze of sleep into something violently awake without warning.
Her eyes snap open to a white world.
White above her. White around her. White so bright it physically hurts to see. For one long second, she simply lay there, staring at the sky—clear and painfully bright—before her brain attempted to reboot.
Snow—she was lying in snow.
She blinked once.
Twice.
The world didn’t reload.
She rolled her head to the side. A peak. Jagged stone jutting up through wind-packed drifts. A horizon of mountains, sharp and endless. Her breath comes out in a white fog. “What in the titty sprinkle fuck did I take last night?” Her voice sounded small; swallowed by vast, open air.
She pushes herself upright; her palms plunged into powder, ice crystals biting into her skin instantly. “I drugged myself on accident. Or I’m dreaming. I am absolutely dreaming.”
She looked down at herself, at the outfit her brain is forcing her to wear. But what she was wearing now was what she went to sleep in—a tank-top that looked a few sizes too big, a pair of pajama shorts that did nothing for the cold, and mismatched socks.
No coat.
No boots.
No logical explanation.
She squints toward the sun. The light refracted off the snow so harshly that it made her eyes water.
“There is no snow in Georgia,” she muttered. “There is especially no snow in my bedroom.” She pinches her own cheek lightly. It stung, but it didn’t wake her. “That proves nothing. People feel pain in dreams all the time.” The second pinch didn’t help her. Neither did the third, fourth, or fifth. Even as she increased the pinch or the time she held it, the little pain didn’t wake her.
Her teeth start to chatter in the biting cold. She forces herself to stand, legs shaky from the snow and sudden down tilt of the world. The wind cuts across the slope, dragging loose snow into thin spirals around her ankles.
It had to have been a hyper-real dream. A stress dream from work. A brain-glitch dream from falling asleep with a background video playing and her mind building a world around the sound. She takes a tentative step; the snow compressing beneath her weight with a very real, very loud crunch. Another step and her socks began to soak. If a dream, it was very committed.
She trudges forward aimlessly, wondering what her brain would hallucinate for her next. She hoped it was a never-ending tropical vacation with a pineapple martini. Neat—because she was tired of ice already.
The air was so clean it almost hurt to breathe, biting at exposed skin and turning breath into white fog the moment it left her lungs. The silence was enormous and deafening.
Snow crunched under her foot again when it came to her—there was no point walking in a dream. She could force herself to float or fly, or be somewhere far away from the subfreezing temperature.
Within her panicked rationalizing, whether she should stay or move, she learned she wasn’t alone.
A scream. High. Young. Scared.
It slices through the mountain air just as violently as the wind. She froze, listening with intent. The sound came again. Not wind, not her imagination—a voice. Her stomach drops and her brain scrambles to reconcile it.
You’re asleep, she reminded herself. This is a dream. You’ve had weirder ones. Remember the one with the grocery store floating in space?
The scream came a third time—closer now. Terrified. Her body leaned toward it before her mind caught up. It was a child’s voice, a young one.
“It's a dream,” She mutters, “There’s nothing forcing me to play hero.” Each step crunched before the ringing echo. Screaming and crying, a voice begging for help. Then two loud cracks—one hollow, one wooden.
She paused mid-step, looking around at the endless snow in every direction. Her expression sharpened with sudden, reckless clarity. It's a child—real or fake—she couldn’t fight her guilty conscience after that. She’d feel too much like her parents.
That—she didn’t want to be.
She broke into a clumsy run, slipping and sliding down the slope as she tried to advance toward the noise. Snow sprayed up around her legs. Her lungs burned at the sudden exercise. The air tore at her throat, icy and raw.
The screaming stopped abruptly, as if it was choked out of the one crying. The idea of that was worse than the sudden silence. Her bare feet burned in the cold as she ran, fingers pulling her up rocks and ice.
She crested a ridge of the mountainous hill and nearly stumbled straight off it. Below her, in a wind-carved hollow of rocks, something moved.
At first, her brain rejected it. The shape was wrong, the colors were wrong, the location was wrong.
What it looked like was a bird being pinned down by a pig in a very snowy mountain.
In the white snow, there were scattered white feathers, dappled with blood. Silver tipped arrows disrupted the layer of snow as if they were shot in panic. Clawed toe prints started and ended abruptly, as if the being that left it took off flying.
In the shadow of a few trees, something white was pressed under the body of something red. A broken wing flapped uselessly, beating the air in crooked circles. A beak pried open, stuffed with a ball of cloth.
The woman blinks in the brightened world, taken back by the costumes. Rubbing her eyes until sparks formed, she blinked hard to steady her vision to normal. But the world did not pixelate. The sky did not dissolve. The cold did not fade. Turning back to the fight, the costume didn’t disappear—for neither the bird nor the pig.
Whatever it was, he saw her. And due to her guilty consciousness of wanting to ignore it and run away, she knew she couldn’t. Because if she did, she would be no worse than the pig. Its eyes were wide in fear, tears lining the top of his feathered pink cheeks.
Its cry was muffled when the pig forced its broken wing up. The bird spat out the rag and pecked wildly at the pig, beak tinged red from blood. “Help me!” The voice again was young, barely skirting the edge of masculine. “Help me—please!”
His voice was clear, urgent and real. His panic tense was real enough, she wondered if she could have physically felt it. Something in her chest moved faster than logic.
Her heart pounded, her hands clenched. This is a dream, she repeated it over and over. Convincing herself that it was nothing. But the boy was screaming.
And if it really was just a dream, then she didn’t have to be careful. She didn’t have to be rational. She just had to move long enough for her brain to wake up.
“This is going down as the weirdest fucking dream I have ever had.”
The woman didn’t give herself time to think. If she thought too long, she might decide this was stupid. Or dangerous. Or that the logical thing to do in a dream involving a giant pig and a screaming bird was to quietly walk the other direction.
Instead, she scooped both hands into the snow. Cold powder packed instantly between her fingers, along with a few frozen pebbles hiding beneath the surface.
Breathing hurt when she pulled her arm back. Screaming hurt just as much. “HEY! CHUCKLEFUCK!” The shout cracked across the hollow as she hurled the first snowball and ducked back down. She didn’t see the way it smacked directly into the side of the pig creature’s head with a wet thwack.
It jerked upright with an outraged squeal, its hand loosening on the bird as it spun toward the ridge to find her. The bird beneath it squawked in surprise, eyes snapping toward the ridge where his mysterious attacker-savior hid. In the snow, the woman was already making several more handfuls of icy gravel and launching them like baseballs. The second–because the animal was looking for her—caught right between the eyes; it screeched.
“Yeah!” she yelled, packing snow and rocks together with frantic hands. “That’s right, asshole! Right here!” The third one hit it square in the snout—the creature staggered back a step, more confused than hurt. The animal snarled and finally abandoned its pinned prey, stomping toward the slope with an angry roar. “Oh fuck—okay, that actually works,” she breathed in disbelief.
She tried meeting it in the middle—running down the slope, only to trip over her own feet and roll down in a tumble of limbs and rocks. The wind bit into her worse than before as she slowly became wet by the snow.
At the bottom of the mountain, the woman froze for exactly half a second as she looked at the pig-faced monster and really took in the fact that it was wearing a loincloth in this kind of weather. Then she grabbed two more handfuls of snow and rocks as she scrambled to stand.
“Nope! No! Go away!” She hurled both; one smacked into its chest and the other exploded across its face. The creature snorted, shaking its head violently as icy chunks bounced off its floppy ears. “Fuck off!” she shouted, scooping up more ammunition. “Get out of here!”
Another throw—another—another.
The monster roared and stomped closer, clearly trying to decide whether the weird yelling human was worth the effort. The woman grabbed the biggest rock she could find in the snow. “Try me, bitch! And I’ll be making this one for the kid!” she yelled, whipping it forward.
The stone—the size of a softball—bounced off the creature’s forehead with a sharp clack. Dazed, it let out a furious squeal and lunged forward.
The woman screamed back—not in defence, in terror. She grabbed fistfuls of snow and flung blindly.
The icy blast hit its eyes. The ‘not pig thing’ recoiled instantly, clawing at its face and snorting in confusion. “HA!” she shouted, already scrambling toward the bird. “That’s right! Snow blindness, bitch!”
The creature shook its head violently, now far more annoyed than committed to the fight. Whatever the creature was, it was ugly and pissed her off.
The woman slid the last few feet on her knees beside the bird. Up close, he looked even smaller.
Wide blue eyes looked up at her—either curiosity or fear, she doesn’t know. White and gray feathers were matted and drenched by the snow. A wing was bent at a painful angle, an angry red color poured from various cuts on his body.
“Oh, honey,” she muttered softly, unsure of where or how to touch.
The creature made itself known again behind her, snorting at her back. She glanced over her shoulder and immediately scooped up another handful of icy rocks. “I SAID FUCK OFF—I’M HAVING A MOMENT!” She hurled it with surprising accuracy that impressed even her.
The pig-thing yelped at her, snorting once more in irritation. It stomped the ground and pointed at her. She screamed back, pointing with her middle finger, and threatened it with more rocks. Finally, whatever ugly thing it was, it turned and lumbered away into the trees with an offended grunt.
The woman stayed perked up, another rocky snowball clenched in her hand just in case. Only when the monster disappeared over the ridge did she slowly lower it.
“…Okay,” she breathed, and tossed it off to the side, “Ugly ass fucking whatever the hell.”
Then she turned back to the bird. He stared up at her with wide, watery eyes. “Is the bokoblin gone?” he asked. He trembled—either fear, pain, or cold.
“That’s what it's called? Yeah,” she said, brushing snow off her hands. “Yeah, honey, I think the pig’s done with us.” She found the wad of cloth the creature had shoved into his beak and attempted to dry her hands with it. “Can I touch you? Your, uh, your wing is pretty broken.” The bird gasped for air in panic. Up close, she could see how much the broken wing was trembling. And just how young the boy looked.
“Hey, hey—none of that. Easy,” she said quickly. “Easy.” He tried to sit up and winced, looking down at his wing. The woman could see the way his eyes watered before squeezing tight.
“I—I really want to go home,” he said quietly.
Her expression softened immediately. “Oh, baby,” she murmured. She crouched beside him slowly, careful not to startle him. “Okay. Yeah. That’s a reasonable request.” She glanced around the endless snowfields again. “…Do you mind telling me where that is?”
The bird hesitated. Then, “Rito Village. Down the mountain.”
The woman nodded like that meant absolutely anything to her. “Alright, honey. I have to pick you up, alright? Will that be okay?” He nodded just enough for the woman to see. She carefully slid one arm beneath him, supporting the injured wing as gently as possible against her chest.
He was surprisingly light when she lifted him. He was bird enough looking; his bones must have been hollow as well. “Wait, wait!” The boy’s good wing beat her in the face, feathers light enough that it didn’t hurt. “I need to get my bow! Please—I need it!” Leaning rapidly to the side, he looked over her shoulder to find it. Off to the side, left behind in the snow, the woman spotted a blue fabric lazily waving in the wind, half buried and tied to a chunk of wood.
“I’ll get it—promise. Calm down, honey.” She hobbled in the snow, feet sinking in the dense snow. Lifting it, she heard the boy gasp painfully—the bow was snapped into two, held together only by the bowstring. She handed it to him with as much care as she could, not to lose the ends. He pressed it between their bodies and leaned his head to her neck, trying to hide his tears.
“My name is Tulin,” he muttered, voice muffled.
“Nice to meet you, sweetpea, I’m just one lost lady…” she replied. The outsider looks over the mountain ridge again, tall and unforgiving-looking. “And I think I’m more lost than I thought I was… Weird ass, fuck ass dream.”