Frozen Flight

Howling spirits encircled her as she trudged forward in the encompassing cyclone of snow and razor winds. Only she remained from their flight from certain death. It was far better for them to attempt the blizzards, westward, than stand before the certain hale of lead or the ligature that awaited them at their rear. The girl suffered the incessant lashings of the wind and snow, slowly edging forward, each step more merciless than the last. Her thighs burned with each buried step through the abyss of frozen landscape, infinite before her. The girl's world extended before her in endless agony.

The torrent of snowfall continued to dive towards the earth, making each step a movement approaching either near-certain death or her salvation. The girl's outward breath disappeared in the mist of frost and snow, so swiftly swirling about her that sight over a yard became impossible. She had no means with which to determine her path to safety. The only indicator of any encroaching safety was that the she was moving downhill, staggering away from the frozen zenith of the mountain range in her wake, littered with the bodies of her three former escapees. The only ones to truly escape.

As the girl walked further forward, bayonets of darkness began to rise above her, silhouetted spears with spikes protruding from the central body, becoming denser as the girl meandered through the encroaching maze of them, grabbing at her ragged shirt and wearing her down. Shallow, scratching cuts appeared on the girl's arms and chest as she slowly imposed her will on the branches tearing at her until she could endure no longer. The girl's crusade toward salvation slowed to a halt. Her knees buckled and she slumped to her side to lay on a fresh bed of snow, and slept.

The girl woke to numbness, her left side useless and immobile. She blinked away the fatigue of her frozen slumber to stare along the snow toward the path she had come from into the woods, her deep footsteps were erased under the snowfall while she had slept. From her feet to her thighs, the girl was enveloped in a layer of frost and her head throbbed as if a hammer cracked at her temples perpetually. The storm of the night before had calmed to simmering whispers of frozen winds outside of the woodland and a vicious sound disturbed the forest peace.

Barking, the barking of bloodhounds, beasts bred with the sole purpose of hunting wounded prey. The trees vibrated with the growls and snarls of the beasts, the snapping of jaws cracking between the woodland, shaking the snow from the branches. Still, the girl could not move. Her limbs would not move for her want of running away from the flaring nostrils that searched for her. The girl moaned for the strength to move the slab of snow from her legs, and after pulling with what remained of her strength, she liberated herself from a frozen grave. She began to crawl.

With her salvation from the snow that had enveloped her, the winds began again their howl as the hounds at her back seemed to roar. She could only crawl deeper into the forest of endless white, away from the dogs and their masters, with the hope of concealing herself in the frozen woodland. Before she could muster the strength to hide or to run, the hounds were upon her, barking and snarling, spitting and drooling. The dogs thrashed about the snow in their vicious rallying cry to the hunters and the girl twisted onto her back and covered her face.

When the girl woke again, the snow and winds of the mountain forest were on the horizon. Through a metal fence clothed in razor sharp barbs, the girl could see the distance she alone had reached from the initial escape with the others. Before the girl stood a man clad in black, and the girl was bound to a wooden post, her bare knees sunken into the mud. She stared at his implacable eyes as he raised his arm and thought only of the freedom of the frost and the trees before he lowered it.