The Winds of Winter

The Winter You Remember

The silky smooth smoke came from her mouth and evaporated in the winter sky. Light snow was falling atop her rifle like a fine dusting of parmesan on spaghetti and her hand steady as an ox. Her eye was looking straight at a deer that was eating the bark of a tree, she was crouched behind a bush that was about ten feet from the deer. She aimed the barrel of the rifle towards the deer to only have it look up than have it go back to eating. She aimed until she had the shot then, "Bang!" The animal was lying on the snow. She got up from her crouched position to witness her animal. The deer was dead with a pool of blood growing from it, however, the snow began to soak in the red which slowed the spreading. She put the rifle onto to her back with a makeshift latch and got out her knife. She needed the whole animal, so she cut it in a way to make a backpack out of the deer. With the deer securely on her back, she headed back to her home where she could skin the deer for trade in the local town.

She walked to her horse who was sleeping while tied to a tree. The horse woke up as soon as she put the deer atop the horse's far end and tied it securely. She untied her horse from the tree and began her journey back to town. She was only an hour from town but she was out in the woods all day and the sky began to get dark. During the night the frigid temperatures lower even more and it becomes hard to breathe. If her horse did a sprint back, she could be home on time with enough time to skin the deer. The snow wasn't too deep or else she would have brought her dog sled team, however deep enough to bring her snowshoes just in case. Her horse carried many things on it's back when she went hunting. In particular, was the saddle, each saddle she made had her name on it, Anna Davis. Every person in town knew her and her work, everyone went to her to get their saddles or fixed them. She was spectacular at her job and got paid a fair price for each saddle. Anna or Ann, which she liked to be called, went hunting every Saturday, worked for five days and like everyone else went to church on Sunday. This particular Saturday was nice, there was no winter storm, no heavy rain and the temperature wasn't even below negative twenty. She was halfway home and the sun was beginning to set. With the yellow sky reflecting off the white snow, it made it look like the horse was stepping through crystals. When she got closer to home, she had to watch her horse. There was an incline that could lead the horse into making a misstep and breaking its leg.

She dismounted her horse and took the reins and walked the horse up the hill. The incline wasn't high at all, the only problem was how steep it was and how ice can accumulate under her feet. Next, to her snowshoes, she packs spikes that attach to her boots to stab into the ice so she won't fall with the horse. Ann continued to climb to have more snow to dredge through the farther up she got. Eventually, she got to the top and made her way down. The decline was harder than climbing up, there was more ice and she couldn't get a steady footing even with the spikes. Ann was paying so much attention to her feet, she didn't notice her horse was having a more difficult time going down the hill. She was going to fast for the horse to keep up and took a wrong step, enough to slip and fall forward. The horse tried to gather itself on the hill but to no avail and continued to slide forward taking Annie with it. They both went sliding down the hill with the horse rolling and Ann rolling besides it. Annie landing first at the bottom to see her horse coming down just as fast. She tried to get up and move out of the way but before she could even lift herself, the horse landed on her and she lay unconscious.

She woke back up to see that it was dark, the horse was still laying on her limp. She looked at her horse to see if it could move, but sadly it was dead, it broke its neck on the way down. She had to get the horse off her, she lifted half the horse just enough to get her out from under it. Ann knew she was stranded in the woods till morning, she had to think of the survival skills she had learned at a very young age. She gathered her things from the horse to see what she had. She had her gun with a hand full of bullets still left, her knife and ax, and her snowshoes. The only problem was the deer, it wasn't attached to the horse anymore, but she couldn't look for it now, it was pitch black out and she needed to make a fire. She saw little saplings next her, but any dry type of branches was buried in the snow. She used her ax to chop down the little trees and set them in a pile. She cleared a circle of snow so she could start a fire. Ann knew she had flint on her because she always takes a little rock of it just in case. She padded herself till she felt it, she dug it out from her clothing and struck it against her ax which made a spark. She broke up some of the sticks and put them in the clearing, she starting striking the ax and flint together. She tried about ten times till the branches lit on fire and now she could see just what had happened.