As I woke up, I snuggled closer to Holly, before my hands closed on air, and I snapped awake. I quickly sat up and looked around, scared that she had been taken or injured over the night. However, as my eyes cleared, I saw her sitting at the table, freshly clothed in a shirt from the closet, fashioned into a short dress. She wore a coat on top of this, and was eating something from a plate. There was a pan on the oven as well, and as I got up, I realized that she had taken the liberty of cooking us breakfast. I crossed to the table, and sat down; taking a bite of the porridge she had prepared for us.
"Thank you, Holly" I said as I sat down, acknowledging her work.
She looked much better today, with all the colour returned to her face, and she even smiled as I mentioned it.
"Oh, it was no bother. I couldn't sleep anyways, and you made dinner last night, so I had to make up for it." She smiled at me, and I smiled back.
"Have you found anything around the cabin so far?" I asked, as I put another spoonful into my mouth.
"Not so far, but I'm certain we can find something, now that it's day."
I finished my porridge, making small talk as I ate, joking and laughing. When I had finished, I crossed to the sink, and set the plate down, walking across the rug as I did so, marvelling in the softness of the fur. I took a step, and rather than the hard thud of the concrete, a remarkably loud clank could be heard, seeming to echo before diminishing. I stomped in the spot again, and the sound replayed. Setting my bowl in the sink, I peeled back the rug, as Holly stood nearby. Underneath the rug, cut out of the concrete floor, was a large metal panel, a heavy iron handle inlaid in the metal. I looked at Holly, and she gestured to opening it. Grabbing the handle, I yanked up, but it wouldn't budge. I tried again, but it seemed to be stuck shut. I stood up, dusting off my pants, and walked over to the door. Tossing coats aside, I picked up the coat hook, and kicked off the feet, leaving a seven-foot long metal pole. Wedging it inside the hook of the trapdoor, I pulled up, using the added leverage to assist me. With a crack, the trapdoor sprang open, releasing a blast of cold, musty air from below. Returning the coat rack to its proper place, I went over to the hole and, grabbing a lantern off the table, began to descend the ladder. The room below was not a large one, but it was possibly the best thing that could have happened to us. In addition to large crates labelled FOOD in large black letters, and in multiple languages, a dozen other crates lay open, displaying rifles, swords, and pistol and shot. A few leather knapsacks, and a couple leather trench coats, hung on pegs on the wall.
"Holly, you might want to come down here!" I called, before seeing her long, pale legs descend through the trapdoor.
"Bloody hell, we're set!" she exclaimed, opening the boxes of food and extracting tubs of butter, whole turkeys preserved in ice, bags of flour, and several loaves of bread.
"I wonder who lived here." I said aloud, removing a rifle from a box, and noting the unfamiliar, seemingly gas-powered mechanism.
Turning the gun over, I read the inscription on the stock. Lañn nă Ţiʼne read the inscription, from a language that I couldn't possibly translate. Inspecting the mechanism closer, I noticed a slot for bullets, but didn't seem to have a way of expelling casings. I picked up a cartridge from nearby, and noticed it only contained solid brass bullets, with no shell or powder to be found. Holly walked over, a stack of clean clothes in her arms.
"Collin, we're not here to fight, we only need to survive."
"I know, it's just... what if that wolf think comes back?" I responded, bringing up last night's terror.
"Here, let's just focus on getting to a city of some sort, and then we can try to fight those monsters. Come upstairs with me, and grab some of those papers."
I followed her upstairs, avoiding looking straight up to maintain her privacy. When we had returned to the upper cabin, she laid the clothes on the table, as I laid the gun and papers down as well. I grabbed one of the papers, and, upon opening it, realized it was a map. Written at the bottom, I large, sprawling letters, read the name Cǽrvelle, which I assumed what must be the country or continent we were on. Looking closer, I noticed a few scattered islands, centred on a larger city, labelled Corveille.
"Holly, come look at these... try and find if any of them show where we are." I requested, as she came over and leant over the table, grabbing some of the maps and opening them, pushing the clothes and gun to the side.
"Here, I think this is us" she said, pointing to one map
The map showed one of the larger islands on my map, and showed several roads around it. Near the centre of the map was a small image of a cabin. The cabin had a large, hand drawn circle around it, and someone had written around it in the same tongue as on the gun. I looked around, tracing the road that ran past the cabin to find the nearest civilization.
"Here, we could go here." I said, pointing to a small city, named Cille dev sur Monte.
Holly looked closer, following the road to where my finger was. Based on the scale of the map, it would be a twelve-mile journey, and in the snow, might end up being a full day of walking.
"Geez, that's far away... and what if nobody's there?" she pointed out.
"Still, we have to try. We'll end up dying if we stay here."
She stood up and paced around a bit, putting her hands on her hips.
"We would need protection, in case there's something else there." She said, gesturing to the gun. "We would also need to pack food, to make sure we don't end up hungry."
"Holly, look at it! It's the central hub for not only this island, but all these other islands here!" I suggested, referring to the other map.
"Fine, but we'd need to leave early in the morning." She said, returning to the table.
"Splendid! Let's get ready then."
I returned downstairs, and began grabbing as many of the rifle cartridges as I could, as well as a couple of pistols, which seemed to accept the same cartridges as the rifle. When I returned upstairs, Holly had begun stuffing two of the knapsacks with fresh clothes, a coat for each, and a couple cans of food, as well as a sack of water, which she had filled from the sink.
"Holly, have you ever shot a pistol before?" I asked her, handing her one of the pistols.
"Ummm... maybe you should do the shooting, if it comes to that" she replied, pushing the pistol back towards me.
"Nonsense! Here, I'll teach you." I said, giving the pistol to her.
I led her outside and, taking one of the cartridges, showed her how to load the pistol, accommodating for its strange design. Once the pistol was loaded, with the cartridge extending down past the trigger, almost even with the butt of the handle, I showed her how to aim, using a nearby tree as a target.
"Now, you have to make sure your account for recoil when you fire, or you might be thrown off balance." I said, showing her how to hold the pistol.
"Now, feel free to shoot." I said, backing up to let her fire
"PHOOMB!" she made when the gun went off, the recoil tossing the gun back. I stepped in close, helping her recover her balance.
"Bloody hell that hurt!" she yelled. "I thought it was supposed to injure the target, not me!"
"Don't worry, if we get into a scuffle, I'll be the one shooting for you. Here, let me take a crack at it."
I raised the pistol to shoulder height, turning perpendicular to the tree, arm level. I pulled the trigger, and was thrown back with the same explosive "PHOOMB!" sound as Holly was. I quickly recovered though, and finished firing all the bullets into the tree, most meeting their target. I turned to Holly, and saw that she was shivering, as she was only wearing her shirt. I led her back inside, and we began packing once more. I returned downstairs, and brought up two pairs of swords, checking them for sharpness, before strapping them to a pair of pistol belts brought up from the basement as well. After a few hours of bringing supplies up from the basement, we decided to break for lunch.
I brought up a loaf of bread from the basement, spreading butter on some slices before placing a slice of cheese on them, grilling them in the pan before covering them with another slice of bread. I brought us our grilled cheese, and we ate in relative silence. Once we finished our lunch, we began again. Packing everything we could possibly need, from spare swords to bullets to bags of preserved meat, we finally finished getting our bags packed, weighing over 50 pounds each, and prepared them by the door, ready to set out at sunrise the next morning. I left the maps, a sword, and the fully loaded gun outside the bags, as well as our coats, so that we would not have to rummage inside them that next morning.
"Well... I suppose I should get dinner going." Holly said, casually walking over to the stove.
At that moment, we heard from outside the cabin a gut-wrenching, horrific howl of a creature about to die. Immediately following, an enormous, guttural growl of a monster of immense size echoed through the night. Holly and I ran to the window, peering out into the night to see the creature from the night before tearing into the still-warm carcass of a large, antlered animal, its blood pulsing out of wounds in its neck to stain the snow a bright red, visible even in the dark of night. Then, the same howl from last night reverberated through the silence, and the great beast picked up the animal in its gigantic teeth and galloped off, leaving only the blood on the snow and that eerie howl echoing through the night.
"Suddenly, I'm not very hungry anymore." Holly mentioned her face pale.
"Me neither. Let's just go to bed so we can wake up early tomorrow, so we don't have to deal with that thing."
"Agreed. And you're sleeping in the bed with me, there's no way I can sleep soundly with that... thing, still running loose out there."
With that last closing comment, we began getting undressed for bed, me turning away as Holly changed. Unfortunately, I was not afforded the same respect. As we both crawled into the bed, Holly turned to face me, pulling the sheets up over both of us. Her beautiful blue eyes bored into mine, and we lay there for a second or two began she spoke.
"Collin..."
"Yes?"
"What do you think we'll find tomorrow?" she asked, her blue eyes blending to form an innocent, intrigued face that I simply could not ignore.
"I don't know, Holly. I really don't know."
We lay there for a couple of seconds, and I realized that I had been dreaming about this moment every day for the week previously. In bed, with the girl of my dreams, just the two of us, with nothing to do. Yet, I was nowhere near where I wanted be. I was in the middle of the woods, nowhere near civilization, with monsters outside and death from where we came.
"Funny how situations change like this, isn't it?" I mumbled, before noting Holly was asleep.
I reached my arms around and hugged her close, before dozing off with her in my arms.