~{🌔𝕲𝖑𝖔𝖜 𝖔𝖋 𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝕸𝖔𝖔𝖓, 𝕲𝖑𝖔𝖜 𝖔𝖋 𝖔𝖚𝖗 𝕳𝖊𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖘🌖}~

🌕~Chapter 4 ~{}~ New Face, Old Friend~🌕

      This... is gonna take a while. I really hope it's worth it. If it isn't? Well, fuck me with a chainsaw.

      I sat down and crossed my legs, leading my head on my fist closed around my flashlight. I gripped the ice pick tighter, then swung it down hard, digging it into the ice and twisting it around a bit, forming cracks into the material. I continued this motion until the chunk I was hitting came loose, flicking slightly upwards for a moment from the impact before falling back down. I picked it up and turned it to the side, observing it. It was pale blue, cloudy, and about half an inch thick. I threw it into the huge pit a couple feet in front of me and sighed, letting my arm fall to my side. "I'm bored," I groaned. I mean, this obviously isn't supposed to be fun, but I'm still bored since this is so damn boring. "And it's too quiet, too. I feel like I'm about to get jumped by a faerie or some shit."

     I put the ice pick down (by that, I mean I stabbed it into the ground next to me) and stood up. I walked over to my backpack, which was cleaned up against a nearby tree, and opened one of the smaller pockets, pulling out a pair of earbuds. I then reached into my pocket and took out my phone, plugged the earbuds in, turned my phone on, and put the buds in my ears. I opened up Spotify (or Apple Music, whatever's your cup of tea) and turned on some music to break the silence that had become completely unbearable for me. Some (F/G) started playing, filling my ears and bringing me peace. Finally back in the proper headspace to work, I walked back over to the iced-over terrain and continued picking away the ice.

      A few minutes passed, and I had gotten at least 5 more chunks off the ground and into the pit. "I'm getting this done quicker than I thought I would," I thought, then I looked at the rest of the area. I had a lot more to get rid of. "...Well fuck, never mind."

I rolled my eyes for no reason and kept stabbing trough the ice, this time in multiple different places farther away from each other in an attempt to get a much larger chunk of the sheet of ice broken up into pieces. I hummed along to the music playing in my earbuds, bringing the pick down to the beat of the song. At this point, I had put multiple ~5 millimeter holes in the ice, and I began connecting the dots, kind of outlining where I wanted the sheet to break apart. Once I had a proper outline, I dug the ice pick into one of the holes and twisted it around, breaking the ice relatively close to the pattern I was hoping for, though not enough for me to pick it up and toss it into the pit. Looking at the now cracked ice, I noticed that I somehow managed to make it look similar to the map of Emporia. "Huh. How'd I do that?" I wondered, and continued the twisting motions with the pick.

I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. I'd say that it was odd, but this is a forest; it was probably just a wild animal of some sort, or maybe one of the Subconites. Either way, it's best to ignore it. The ice won't clear itself. Well, I mean, I guess it could just melt, but— actually, never mind.

Again, movement, this time accompanied by a slight red glow and sudden freezing temperatures. Startled, I turned my head in the direction of the movement. There, a few feet away to my right, a glowing, bright red string dangled about in the air, seemingly tied to something. I looked up to see where it could be hanging from, but above, I saw nothing but the dark starry sky, which the odd string seemed to endlessly float up to. I looked back down. "Uh... huh?" I hummed in confusion. How the hell was this random-ass string just coming down from the sky? How did it even get here? What the hell? As expected, the string didn't react at all, since it was a string and obviously not sentient or alive in any way. I instinctively reached out to touch it, but it... flinched... away? Huh? Am I seeing things? Weird. I decided to ignore the odd string and continued breaking the ice. Suddenly, the air became colder, and I shivered. It was the middle of summer, so I was wearing a t-shirt, of course meaning I was ill-equipped to deal with below freezing temperatures. And again, the red glow appeared in the corner of my eye.