Genesis

Prologue

It's cold... and there's white. So much white.

The ground crunches softly as Chena traverses the iced over river near his village. He's supposed to be out hunting, but being the easily distractible person that he is, he's doing more aimless wandering and being bored.

It really is very white out there. The only thing keeping him from being lost are the black and brown naked trees in the distance that flank the river and the faint string of smoke emitting from his village's fire.

He wants to go back, but he doesn't want to disappoint his father by bringing back nothing, so he does his best to find something to hunt.

The wildlife is kind of sparse today, so Chena's mind wanders as he keeps an eye out for them.

He finds the sheer whiteness of the sky and land to be very hypnotizing and entrancing. It relaxes him as he loses himself in the enveloping whiteout.

By now he's not paying attention at all and wandering aimlessly, the line of his footsteps in the snow undulating like a drunk sine wave.

What finally snaps him out of his daze is a-*crick*

He stops and looks down at his feet. He didn't appear sunken in, but just to be sure, he wiggled his foot a little.

He could hear the grinding sound of ice against ice, if ever so faintly, especially through the snow, but he was certain. He was on some thin ice.

Not wanting to end up in cold water, he walked back the way he came, rather more focused on his surroundings than before.

Unfortunately, as he walked, he heard more creaking and cracking. Feeling a little bit anxious, he figured he must've weakened the ice earlier as he walked on it. All he could do was hope that he could reach safety, as soon as possible, too.

Suddenly, he hears a low grunt. He looks around, searching intently for the source of the noise.

He catches something ever so faintly in the distance, so he trains his eyes on that section of the horizon.

There, again. A section of white that's moving a bit jaggedly, like it didn't quite fit with the rest of the pristine white that made up his surroundings.

He figured it was a polar bear. In fact, he was about 95% sure it was. He also figured it hadn't seen him, which was good. He was less than 95% sure of that.

He had to keep walking, though. He had a spear, so he could fight off a bear, but he had less ability to fight off cold water, so that was his priority.

Plus he came out here to hunt, so this was good news.

He continued creeping forward, keeping his eyes on the bear and his ears focused on the ground, knowing he'd be safe from the ice when he stopped hearing the creaking coming from it.

A sudden sharp crack drew his full attention to the ground. He paused, very nervous, and eeeeever so slightly teased the ground with his feet to see how bad it was.

It jiggled a bit, but didn't seem to be too unstable, so he took a breath and brought his head back up.

Then it hit him.

RAAAGGH *CRAK*

The sound of the ice cracking had alerted the bear to his presence and it had come running at him.

The bear roared and pounced on Chena, pinning him to the snowy ground.

It was this sudden jolt of force that finally made the ice give way.