The Forest's Edge

Dawn is arriving as you stride across a field. A fence, wired with sparse intevals of posts disrupting its bleak monotony, silhouetted by the rising sun.
The snowfall continues, unperturbed by the sudden appearance of the sun.
It doesn't have a perceptible impact on your psyche.
The weather's only limited itself to such precipitation for the last few days, and the going's been getting tougher. You haven't shaved in weeks, finding a roof to
stay under at night became increasingly difficult as your appearance startled those you'd been hoping to receive such luxuries from. Mixed looks of
bewilderment, terror, annoyance.
Your access to food was in a similar predicament. You were forced to hunt the wildlife across the snow covered plains, where such wildlife wasn't hibernating for
the winter. Patience wasn't a particularly innate virtue of yours. You'd wind up abandoning a particularly long winded chase, or a wait for a stray fox to appear at a
trap.
It was a particularly brutal winter.

Not many greeted you on these roads. For them being less travelled, or it being winter, or a mixture of those two reasons, you didn't know. You might have tried
waving a passing vehicle down, but they were few and far between. The process became a waste of energy.

The weather deteriorated as the winter progressed. It was barely January, and things seemed only to get worse.
Your Christmas was spent huddled over a sputtering fire while the snow made valiant, and eventually sucessful attempts at dousing it, and eating a barely
heated and insubstantial tin of beans.
You woke to find the fire covered, and you having developed a cold.
Having shrugged off worse, you went on your way towards a potential hunting ground. The forest path was, like others, covered in snow, and had the occasional
trail left by an animal. Needless to say you wandered off the path, hunger overriding any sense of safety. You didn't know what was in this forest.
Unwilling to die hungry, you shuffled into the woods.

The hunt was arduous. It also yielded nothing.
Your mind began to contemplate the immediate threats. Wolves, starvation, pneumonia. Good thing the snow stopped falling. You wandered without destination.
You tighten your jacket, the cold setting in again. This was by no means, easy.
Night falls, bringing the time you spent hunting into perspective. Fruitless, tiring, long.
In your stupor, you stumble out of the forest, into a clearing.
The snow falls down, harder than ever.
You're weak. When was the last time you ate? Rested?
Too much time spent walking. You're tired, and the cold didn't help.
Your mind was barely functioning, and it was demanding rest.
You knew, that if you rested here, you'd die. At the paws of wolves, or starvation, or the cold. Whichever came first.
Heck, if it was wolves, it'd be a bad wind that wouldn't have blown for someone.
You inexplicably wound up on the snow, laying against a tree.
And, resigning yourself to your fate, lose consciousness, knowing that one thing or another would happen.
Good, bad, or otherwise.

So this is death. The afterlife. You blink. Pretty unimpressive for what it was hyped up to be. A landscape of an endless desert stretched before you, sands
shifting on a constant basis revealing structures of an alien persusasion.
Isn't what you'd expected. Then again, you weren't one to believe in deities.
Hell? Purgatory? Sure wasn't heaven.
Your balance is offset by a sudden lurching. The platform you were standing on suddenly rose to a greater height than those of the spires surrounding you.
A wind picked up. Staying on the narrow platform was a difficult matter, sand blasting your face.
And you fell, wind whipping at your falling body as you did.
The stone floor rose to meet you as you fell, it's unusual coloring contrasting against the ruins and desert surrounding it.
As you hit the ground, you shoot up in a bed. The room is dark, the snow falling against the window, barely able to think. A guest room?
As you shift your position, you notice that the size of the bed is small. Disproportionately so. Your feet are in the air beyond the end of the bed. Or were you just
too tall for it?
They are, by no means, cold. The temperature was high enough to realize that you were capable of moving most of your joints, a liberty of which the cold had
taken from you.
Not that you could have been picky about it. Friendly people were uncommon these days.

You drift back into unconsciousness, returning to dreams of the past.
The medical ward, the doctors, the eventual return to the field... The return.
A soldier without his platoon. No family to return to. Years spent wandering.
You are soon awakened. The sun is shining through the window, traces of snow missing.
The room is bathed in the morning sun. You couldn't tell how early it was. No clocks were visible in the room.
The sleep hadn't helped. Your legs were, unlike last night, were stiff, and further examination revealed that your neck and arms were in a similar state.
You examine the room. Quite rustic. Wood was apparently it's main construction material.
Upon closer inspection, it looks like it was built into a tree.
Built quite well.
The room is sparsely decorated, though nature is clearly a theme in here.
Your thoughts are interrupted when the door to the bedroom opened.
You inadvertently turn your head towards the source of the intrusion, the door being opened quietly and slowly so as to not wake you, should you have been
asleep.
A lock of pink hair first appears, slowly giving way to a head, most of which was barely visible, aside from a stunningly blue eye.
She notices you noticing her, and visibly flinches at this.
"Oh, um, I'm sorry..." she said in a quiet voice. "I thought you were still resting. I came down to check on you."
She opens the door a little further, revealing a slim, feminine hand pushing it.
Your cue.
"Well that's alright, Miss...?"
She flinches again, and shrinks back for a moment, before letting out an inaudible mumble.
"I'm sorry?" You ask, having genuinely not understood it.
In a tiny voice, she manages a squeak.
"Fluttershy..."
Unusual name, but you weren't about to criticize your host.
"Well Fluttershy, I'm not stopping you from entering."
She makes her timid way into the room. She's wearing a yellow shirt and gray pants, and is walking barefoot. The pink hair became dazzling in the morning light.
She was attractive in this manner, but you weren't about to publicize your opinion. Heck, she's probably married.
You notice no ring as she approaches. She takes a seat by the bedside.
"Um.. How are you today?" She says, a look of concern crossing her face, a lot of which was obscured by her hair.
Determined to be polite, you respond. "Stiff. But a lot better. Did I not have a cold?"
"Oh yes," she said, a gentle smile crossing her face. "But you quickly recovered."
"How long was I out?"
"Three days."
Three days, huh. Three days in the winter down. Few more weeks to go. A trek across the wilderness isn't something you're looking forward to.
"You were lying in the snow when I found you. I couldn't just leave you there. I mean, you looked like you were about to die...." She said, a look of worry crossing
her face again, this one worse than the last.
"And what were you doing, wearing such heavy clothes?"
You were about to respond sarcastically, and ready to point out the window.
When you notice something. Ridiculously strange.
The landscape was unburdened by snow.
"... The... Winter?" You said, as you gestured confusedly to the window.
"...Ended a few hours before I found you, with the Winter Wrap-up." The worrried look passed over her face again.
The landscape was apparently untouched by winter. Judging from Fluttershy's response, Winter Wrap up was some kind of event, cleaning up the winter.
But that didn't make sense.
How did you simply remove the presence of a season?
That aside, there were plenty more unanswered questions.
An increasing amount, if anything.
"What's your name?" She asks, almost inaudibly, as though she were asking about something incredibly personal.
"Denver Baldwin." You say.
"That's a nice name," She said, eyes meeting anything but yours. "Where do you come from?"
You sit up in the bed, and your eyes lock with hers. That stunning blue. Contrast that with the dead gray coloration of your eyes.
Only now does she notice the fact that you're larger than your bed.
"Oh! I'm sorry-"
You cut her off, unwilling to become any more of a burden than you already have.
"Fluttershy," A name you still don't understand, "Don't worry about it."
"Oh, but I don't want you to be uncomfortable." She said, eyes focused on the floor. "I mean, it's such a small bed...."
"A bed's a bed. I don't want to trouble you."
"But it's no trouble at all!"
You move to get off the bed, but the stiffness in most of your joints makes the process difficult.
And then came the realization that you were starving.