Chilling wind screamed and clawed at her ears, but darkness remained.
It pulled her into the waking world slowly, despite it's feverish efforts to jolt her back to consciousness. This was different from how she usually awakened, but she couldn't begin to recall why it was different until her thoughts could form coherent things. Her head--pounding,pulsing, puffing--was the only thing she could register for the first minute. Her features twisted into a grimace, and she briefly wondered if this agony was anything similar to a hangover. She only got used to the pain thrashing in her skull by a small percentage, and it was only then that she could begin to notice other things. Her hair was combed messily by something invisible and cold to her scalp, with small bits of it melting into water droplets. Was she outside? Did someone leave the window open? The reason for the freezing winds became apparent when she opened her eyes.
She was in a plane, only it wasn't flying and it wasn't standing upright and it certainly wasn't in one piece. She was sitting at a sideways angle with the white earth, her body suspended in mid-air only by her own tight seatbealts. Wind howled in her ears while she watched it flap through pieces of torn fabric from other seats, flick at locks of her silky hair or stream in from the plane's side--more specifically her left. It allowed her a glimpse of a sky densely packed with clouds so that sunlight was barely seen. It looked dark, calm and peaceful above her--a sky painted with sleepy grey colors and accented by soothing cold below. Sunset drowsily mumbled something even she couldn't understand, casting a brief glance at the blank earth beyond the plane's left. None of it seemed to register to her immediately, and she felt too tired to. Her neck muscles relaxed more, and the throbbing in her skull helped in the effort to lull her back into slumber. Her eyes closed just as the side of her temple rested against something leathery, something hard and cold like ice. She opened her eyes to look.
She stared long,hard and in horror.
"G-Gk!Augh!" Sunset's throat was dry, depriving the lifeless body of the scream it deserved. Her head pounded the more she stared and the more she moved, but she had to get away from the sight. Turning her gaze did nothing to erase what was now burned in her memory: the ghostly white skin of the man, the heavy clothing stained red on one side, the horrendous wound his neck bore--
The plane--she remembered the plane and sharply twisted herself halfway around. Only a few bodies in front of her, bodies behind her. Some to the right and almost nothing to the left. She sat with the bodies in a small fragment of what once once a long hall of seats. Debris lay in torn pieces around the snowy landscape, sticking up from the heaps of white and keeping their distance from each other. A large piece of the engine, once positioned underneath the wing, now looked as if it had exploded some time ago and burned away in a huge plume of flame and smoke. It emitted a foul odor, but her nostrils had grown accustomed to it in her unconscious state. She vaguely pondered how long she'd been out, or how long since the person next to her or anyone else on board had died.
His face; she remembered it as well. She couldnt remember when she'd gotten on this doomed plane, but she distinctly remembered him sitting next to her. He hadn't been fairly talkative towards her but when he did speak, he proved himself to be a friendly enough acquaintance. She held some conversations with during parts of the flight, and had comfort silence when she didn't. He said was traveling to meet family in Montana, she recalled. He said it would take him two flights due to weather screwing with the one plane that could make it a one way trip. He was supposed to be there in two days time, if he didn't encounter any more setbacks. He should be sitting with his family, enjoying their company and time together. He should be alive.
Her head stilled turned, Sunset sniffled, whimpered and inhaled enormous amounts of cold air at an alarming speed, chilling her lungs. It was frustrating--not being able to remember farther back than that and it was scary to know that she was stranded who knows where on a snowy landscape. Any idea of why she'd ever gotten on this plane was a heavy blur in her brain and the more she tried, the more excruciating her headache became. Her sobs flowed out heavily for a time, almost like melting ice on her cheeks and drying away in the wind. She didn't want to move, save for curling up into a ball or wrapping her arms around herself. Most of all, she didn't want to look in the direction of the body, let alone move past it.
She finally worked up the courage to move after a while, testing her arms and legs for any pain. Her legs seemed fine and the only pain was a slight throb in her wrist, so she moved her hands down to unbuckled the seatbelt. The freezing air made her fingers numb as she unclasped the metal parts and gripped at the seats in front of her to keep from falling all the way down. The climb turned her back to most of the still bodies, but also brought her close enough see others and even mysteriously empty seats. It took courage for her to check for pulses and breaths on the closest ones, but she discovered no other living souls. A few of them looked peaceful in their neverending sleep and others still had a look of shock in their glossy eyes. Some of their faces gave her more shreds of memories, even nice ones, but nothing added up to what she most desired. Sunset had to balance her feet on the sides of some seats after crossing the hallway-turned-wall, then she made a controlled fall onto snowy ground. It made a crunching sound beneath her thin shoes, then silence. The girl looked around once more, taking note of her unfamiliar enviroment.
Sunset couldn't decide what to do next, or decide if anyone she hadn't crawled past could even be alive. The wind decided for her after a time, slithering like icy snakes over her light orange skin and conjuring goosebumps and shivers all over. Seeing that her short sleeved shirt and thin jeans weren't going to help her, Sunset sniffled and nervously scanned the wall of chairs for any sign of her luggage--any luggage at all. All of it must have been ripped off with the roof, and could be anywhere by now. Contrary to what Sunset was thinking, she spotted the silhouette of a suit case not too far from the downed wreckage, and then a much larger piece that was far off. If she was sitting in the back half of the plane, perhaps the roof was that large thing in the distance?
When she was close enough to the lone suitcase, Sunset was quick to notice a body half submerged in snow waiting for her and even quicker did she notice the clothing the body wore. The woman's dark businessjacket flapped like a fallen flag in the breeze, and even the tight skirt rippled slightly. She was in her mid-twenties, tall and thin, her dirty blonde hair caked with snow and untangled from the poised bun she had before the crash. Her eyes were closed, strained shut as if she was still experiencing the mind-numbing fear of the crash.
She wheezed, and Sunset gasped.
"M-Ma'am!" Sunset rushed closer to the woman, hoping that it wasn't the wind who wheezed softly or that she wasn't imagining something. To her her relief there was a louder moan when Sunset lightly gripped at her shoulder, then the woman's eyelids twitched. "Hey. Ma'am! Are you alright--can you hear me?" She urged perhaps a bit too excitedly--she wasn't expecting to find anyone alive out here and was relived to find another living soul in this dismal wreckage. She was much slower to awake than she was, and she constantly blinked as though she thought she was in a dream.
"W-Who're...W-Why...cold..." She mumbled incoherently, raising a weak hand to brush some of the snow out of her face. "..c-cold...th..."As if perplexed by the frozen water, she stared at her fingers and then the wreckage behind Sunset. Her eyes widened more, gazing only at the overturned plane. "...W-We crashed. No...No,no,no,no we couldn't have crashed--there's no way that--Ah! Fuck my leg!"
In the process of scooting backwards, the woman pulled the other half of herself out of the snow and Sunset winced what revealed itself from the white depths. Her left leg, from the knee down, sported a slightly cave-in shin bone. Her skin was dark with a massive bruise, and looked ready to tear if it bent any more. "Sh!t! " Sunset didn't even try to stop herself from exclaiming, and she battled the instinct to try and touch it right now.
"M-My leg! It's not supposed to twist like that--W-Why is it twisted like that?!" The flight attendant faired worse than Sunset at remaining calm, her lower lip quivering in horror at the sight of her mangled limb. Her eyes shot between her leg and Sunset with growing anxiety as her voice became more frantic. "I-I-It's broken, It's broken! It's f ucking b--"
"Wait! Hold still! Please just hold still--you can't make it worse. " Sunset advised as urgently as she could, gently grasping the woman's shoulders and trying to calm her down. Ironic, given that she was still reeling from what she'd survived. "I-I....Um..." After a brief struggle to figure out her next plan of action, the girl reached for the suitcase and opened it in hopes of finding something to help. There wasn't much to note except for a thick stack of clothes and a few tiny items held up by a small net. Some floss perhaps, toothpaste, and a pencil for some odd reason. She looked back to the clothes with a short sneeze--she found a thin jacket that should be large to provide minor protection to one of them from the cold.
Sunset spread it out over the trembling adult as much as she could, making sure that it didn't fly off in the wind as she made to stand. "Okay, I-I'm just g-gonna go over to find more--"
The woman looked at her sharply again, reaching out and shakily grasping her by the hand. Sunset locked eyes with her and swallowed;she seemed to be on the verge of mentally and emotionally breaking. "No! D-Don't leave me here!" She shuddered and closed her eyes; a secret, dark memory seemed to play behind her eyelids. "Please don't leave me here."
She was briefly caught between the option of staying with the frantic woman, or leaving for only a moment to gather some useful items from the wreckage. It didn't seem right to leave an injured person alone in cold weather like this, even if it was only a few minutes...but they could both be in danger of freezing if she couldn't find thicker clothes. "...I..." Sunset couldn't have dreamed that she would ever steal from the luggage of others, no matter what circumstances fell on her. This was no ordinary circumstance, to say the least.
They stared at each other for a long time; one gaze pleading and the other uncertain. Sunset blinked against the snowy wind slithering over her eyes and squeezed the woman's hands as hopefully as she could. "...What's your name?"
Surprised yet willing, the woman swallowed. "Uh, I-It's Anya."
"Anya." Sunset tested the name in her voice, hoping she didn't sound scared. "Okay, Anya. I have to find something for you in one of these luggages, or maybe someone else is out in the snow." She pointed at the large piece of debris in the near distance. "I'm just going out to that thing over there...I'll be right back for you."
She reluctantly half shivered, half nodded with what Sunset had explained and allowed her to get moving. Walking with the strong currents of air pressing at her side felt foreign, but not enough to bring her to a crawl. Within a minute she was close enough to detail the wreckage; it was definitely the roof of the plane, or at least a small part of it. With a relieved sigh through her chilled nose, Sunset picked a heavy-duty duffel bag that was half buried and tugged the frozen zipper down enough for to see several layers of clothes. Someone had been fairly prepared to travel somewhere cold, if the giant sweaters and wooly hoodies were anything to go by. She rummaged through other suit cases for anything else useful and happened upon a box of matches seated next to a box of cigarettes, then floss in another bag. Sunset had thought back to several tv shows where a stranded man could use floss for very helpful things, and she prayed they weren't faking it.
When she felt that she'd gathered all she could, the teen stood back up and noticed it in the horizon for the first time. It was a forest, still as a statue, darkened with the distance, the filtered light from above and the infinite blanket of trees covering it. It looked like a long walk from where they were but it was the most reasonable option-- staying out on the icy sheets could lead to frostbite or some kind of sickness. Anya was in bad enough shape as it was and Sunset wasn't far behind.
Remembering the woman she'd briefly abandoned, Sunset trudged back in the direction of her small footprints. She was still huddled next to the ransacked luggage when she appeared, and a look of relief passed over the blonde's face. Sunset would be lying if she said she didn't feel relived to see her too. "I-I f-found some jackets and a couple of match boxes. N-Nothing for your leg, though..."
"Th-Thank you." With trembling hands, Anya gratefully accepted the hoodie and managed to slide it on herself, albeit slowly. She still seemed cold, but the jacket appeared to give her some semblance in the situation. "Is...Is there anyone else...?"
Sunset couldn't--wouldn't--bring herself to look at the wreckage.
Anya couldn't either.
The teen risked another look out at the horizon, where the trees waited eagerly for her gaze to return. She judged the distance a second time and looked down upon Anya a second time. "See that forest in the distance?" She patiently waited for her to see it. "I think we're better off heading towards that. We might freeze to death out here, even with these jackets and the matches I found. It'll still be cold there, but it'll be many degrees warmer than now."
"...B-But, what if they come looking for us out here?" Anya reasoned, becoming more calm now that she warmed up in the jacket. She'd tried tucking another one around her hurt leg, though the pain only let her you so far. "Then what? They won't find us in there."
Sunset sniffled. "They won't stop looking either. In the forest we can make a large fire, and they'll see the smoke...W-We won't go in entirely, thats...that's not a good idea at all. But staying near the edge is the safest place..."
"...W-Well, I cant--I mean, W-What about my leg? I can't walk."
"No. But I can, and that's all that really matters for us. " The girl squatted beside her, carefully looping an arm underneath her own and curving her wrist to hook her hand on the other side. Anya caught on to her plan and grimaced reluctantly, but ultimately started to shift herself up on her one good leg. "That's it. I'll carry what we need as we go. Keep holding onto me."
With her free arm clutching a bundle of clothing/smaller items and her other arm helping Anya hobble along, Sunset took a slow step forward. It was a slow movement at first, since the wind seemed to generate from the direction of the forest, but they managed to make eight good steps away from the plane wreckage. First eight, then thriteen, then twenty steps and more after; making what remained of their crash nothing but large shadow blotches against white. Then those shadows disappeared as well, abandoning them in the snow. Perhaps it was gone for good now. Perhaps it was the last they would see of the plane.
The forest beckoned them on, but it did not seem more promising the closer it appeared to Sunset. Her eyes soaked in the towering gloom of the trees and their dark, withered bark. The branches melted into the shadows, forming crooked smiles with other branches. The clusters of huge tree trunks sliced the air that snaked through, causing to whistle and whine in chilling pitches. A deep, primal dread surged and frothed in her heart the closer they got. The dread was magic based, making the 'Shimmer' part of her mind tingle with worry.
It was nothing. Nothing could be worse in this forest than being out on ice plains.
Seeking to distract herself, she glanced at the shadowed face of the only other survivor. " Some weekend, huh?"
"What?" She looked up from her mumbling daze, bleary and tired yet alert and fearful. Her expression softened, but she didn't smile. "Oh. Y-Yeah. A real shitty one."
Sunset agreed silently and marched on.
