Alas, but two of them were but vivid nightmares to begin with; what good do the terrors conjured by one's own mind do amongst the brief images from a perfectly mundane - if not to say boring - life?

It was warm and slightly musty, smelling of smoke; she was seated there, on a small rectangular stool, and her lap was covered by the woolen fabric of her skirt - horizontally striped, each stripe with its own color and pattern. One stripe - white with a chain of intricate rhombic symbols in black woven into it - especially stood out, perhaps because it was at just the right place for her eyes to fall onto. She could feel the uneven bark of the wooden stick she held in her left hand, the leathery handle of the knife in her right, and the resistance of the wood as she carved into it with the blade, a chip falling away with each skilled motion of hand. The knife's blade, a bit longer than her hand from wrist to fingertips, glinted faintly in constantly moving yellowish-orange light.

Her stomach hurt with hunger; it was as if there was a hand squeezing it, or it was shrinking smaller, and the shrinking hurt. It was unpleasant, so unpleasant... It was cold, her hands half-numb from being outside for so long despite the thick mittens she wore, the land covered in deep snow, blinding and painful in the sunlight. The snow made a crunching sound with each step she walked. She saw herself grabbing a hold of one of the lower branches of an evergreen tree - she remembered eating the young sprouts of it during early summer when she was but a child, but now was winter, and the sprouts were wooden and the needles hard... Still, she ripped off a section of the branch, sticking it between her teeth and chewing. When you were this hungry, even the bitter taste of resin was preferable to the continued pangs of hunger.

She was looking down, at the toes of her shoes peeking out from under her skirt. Said shoes were white, but covered in dust. Dust, dust, dust... So much dust; dusty was also the gravel road under her feet, and to a small extent also her light skirt. It had not rained for a while... From there the dust. And the carriage that had rolled past her earlier had brought a whole cloud of it with it. Sun was blazing, and a blonde strand of hair had fallen in front of her face. She was still too embarrassed to look up. She could not look up ... and now she had probably been quiet for so long that it was probably uncomfortable and awkward for the person standing before her, too. She probably looked incredibly stupid...

Cold water sloshed over the edge of the bucket she was carrying, dripping over her feet and the wooden floorboards. It was a large bucket, cumbersome and heavy, but it was the only way she could get water to the large metal container at the end of the back room. Arms slightly shaking from the effort, she set the container she had been carrying down right where she stood, in the middle of the room, and stretched; her shoulders and back ached from the last handful of buckets. The room was dim; two tiny windows with four little panels of uneven dirty glass each did not let in much light. Glass was expensive; many people only had holes with shutters in their walls, if that...

It was raining; it had been a light drizzle, but now it was pouring. The sound of the raindrops hitting the ground had turned into a deep rumble. Or was it thunder she heard in the background of it? It smelled fresh ... and wet, but mostly fresh. She was running, her bare feet hitting the meadow, the blades of grass brushing against her calves, her one hand gripping the hem of her shirt, as if she were afraid that the wind might steal it, and the other pressing something against her chest. The raindrops were beating against her face; her shirt was soaked through and though. But she was smiling, and happy, and free! The rain was warm, and the day was no longer as smotheringly hot. Deep down she knew she was not supposed to be out in the rain, but it was fun, and she had the excuse of having been sent to retrieve the package from the village when the rain caught her...

She was tired, so tired... Her lower body hurt, she felt tired, weak, faint, even, but also strangely content and even ... happy? It was dark, quiet; it was night. She was half-sitting on a bed covered in not-quite white linen, and on her arms there rested a dear weight. She had looked up, and sighed gently; she did not want to move in order not to disturb the one she held. She blinked, though in darkness, it hardly mattered. All was well.

Wind was whipping at their face; their chest was heaving and falling in the rhythm of powerful wingbeats. Wings, dark, wide, powerful... They could feel those moving. Feel raw, unadultered power. Strength. Determination. Very strong sense of purpose, even if what their objective was had vanished from their mind for the time being. There was, however, the faint impression that it was something ominous, something wrong, that people would be hurt, innocent people, people that they did not want to hurt... That impression was coupled with the undeniable sense of forward progression and sheer unstoppability, determinism, the inability to alter the course of fate or even adjust one's own actions. Lack of control. They were but an automaton, and from that was born fear. Fear of not for one's own self, but of one's own self and the deeds one would eventually inevitably commit.

The yeast had raised the dough nicely; it was warm as she kneaded it, warm and soft. Despite her covering her hands in flour before she set to the task, some of the dough glued itself to her fingers as she was at the task. There was the desire to lift her hand and simply eat the dough clinging to her finger, but she ignored the temptation for the time being. Some of the dough was separated into three globs, rolled into thinner and longer strips between her hands, and then braided into a pretzel. Before that, her mother had also made pretzel-bread like this. The light was yellow-orange and danced a flickering dance. Her hair was held back by some manner of linen hat.

She was searching, frantically. On the table? No, not on the table... That had been the first place see looked, too - it was but a flat surface of wooden boards, there was no way she could have missed anything on it the first time. In the clothes chest? With shaking hands, she pulled out the clothes from the heavy wooden box, hastily casting those on the floor new to it, but alas, this action yielded no results. Why would she have put it there in the first place? Besides, she had looked there already, too. Just as hastily, she began folding the skirts and blouses, setting them back one by one. Why? Guess she could not tolerate seeing the mess even while she was still looking, and there was always the vague feeling that she could have pulled it out of the box along with the clothes, meaning that it could be on the floor and be unearthed as she puts the clothes away. Even if she was already going through the clothes chest, the illogical place for it to be in, for the second time.

Her throat ... it felt like no air could pass through it, as though it were contracting closing down on itself. There were painful stabs in her chest, her heart hurt - also much like someone were squeezing it just a notch too hard. Her mouth was opening and closing, but no sound was emitted. Her voice simply did not comply. Neither did her eyes. She kept blinking as they stung and her sight kept blurring. Finally, something wet and warm ran over her face. It could not be, could it? It could not be! At last, she could get a word from her mouth, though her voice sounded distant and detached, numb even.
"What ... what do you mean?" It could not be... She had misheard. She had definitely misheard. Or misunderstood. In any case, it was wrong! It had to be...

There was a glint of light and an unearthly glow. Something rumbled, the ground was wrong, it tilted, and she fell ... fell, fell, fell... Something snapped, and she hit a near-vertical surface; reflexively, she dug her fingers in. They had talons, and they rent the metal of the surface. She was only very slowly sliding down the surface she clung to, but yet she still felt like falling, falling, falling... The surface was hard, but it lacked temperature. She knew she had been injured, but she could not feel the pain, only the blood running down her back. Falling, falling, falling, but yet the surface before her eyes was still. She was no longer sliding down; her taloned fingers had dug in deep enough to carry her weight. The combination of falling and utter motionlessness made her nauseous and disoriented. She must not slip and fall again; that would be the end. There was not one thing more certain than that.

The axe was hefty - two feet of hard polished wooden shaft and a solid iron head. Her legs were rooted to ground, spread a bit wider than her shoulders. The axe she raised overhead, only to bring it down on the tree-trunk-segment before her, as thick as her waist and with a line through its heart already riddled with cuts from unsuccessful attempts of splitting it. The momentum the axe-head had gained from its own weight and her arms' strength was significant - it bit two inches deep, but this time, the trunk's fibres were torn apart as a crack began to crawl towards its base. The axe-head was stuck, but it was good. With a breath let out in a huff, she allowed herself a blink of an eye's worth of rest, before she raised the axe overhead again - with the entirety of the section of tree-trunk being lifted with it. Up in the air, she flipped the axe around, and then she brought it down again, the back of the axe-head hitting the surface of the base first. With its own weight, the tree-trunk pressed further onto the axe-blade upon impact, and the crack spread deeper. Another raise of the axe, another flip, and the trunk-segment split open fully, halves falling to two sides. The ground was dry hard dirt, covered in pieces of bark and wooden chips. To the right, there was a log wall, to the left grass; in the distance loomed a dark forest.

The chicken was brown - all their chickens were - and her orange eyes were fixed on her hand in what appeared to be disapproval. Chickens did not have facial expressions ... right? ... but yet she had seen ones stare at her in wide-eyed confusion, beaks slightly ajar, curious chicken doing their best to see what she held, necks stretching impossibly long, and, as was the case with this one, apparently a disapproving chicken. Yet, she moved her hand closer still, seeing how the feathers of the already puffed-up chicken literally stood on ends till she looked almost twice the normal size. A notch closer, and the chicken's head darted forth, her beak hitting her knuckle. It hurt - not much, but enough for her to draw her hand back with a start. There was a minuscule piece of skin torn loose, barely a flake larger than pinhead, with just the faintest speck of red seeping out. But she only had to fetch the eggs...

The flames were dancing; the air of the night was cold, but the person she was resting against was warm. From somewhere, they had found an old blanket to cover their legs with. There were stars in the sky.
"My father used to know the names of many a constellation... The only one I really can find is the Great Bear. And the Northern Star." He let out something that was probably a short chuckle. "At least I'd always know which way is north on a clear starry night... Not that those occurred often."
His voice sounded so different when she had her ear resting against his chest. It was strange... Was this also how he heard his own voice? She could also hear his heartbeat, feel him breathing. It made her feel ... strange, but not in a bad way. She cared about him and, well, it ... being so close to him... It felt good, but also made her feel oddly ... nervous? No, nervous was not the correct word. On top of all, she was also tired after the long day and it was relaxing, to be like that. She felt as though she would fall asleep soon...
"Are you cold?" he asked, sounding mildly concerned.
"Mkmm..." she languidly mumbled in an attempt to reassure him. "No, I am good..."

One dear memory was lost to this hellish world, none were twisted, none but one lone new experience took root...

It was warm and slightly musty, smelling of smoke; she was seated there, on a small rectangular stool, and her lap was covered by the woolen fabric of her skirt - horizontally striped, each stripe with its own color and pattern. One stripe - white with a chain of intricate rhombic symbols in black woven into it - especially stood out, perhaps because it was at just the right place for her eyes to fall onto. She could feel the uneven bark of the wooden stick she held in her left hand, the leathery handle of the knife in her right, and the resistance of the wood as she carved into it with the blade, a chip falling away with each skilled motion of hand. The knife's blade, longer than her hand from wrist to fingertips, glinted faintly in constantly moving yellowish-orange light.

Her stomach hurt with hunger; it was as if there was a hand squeezing it, or it was shrinking smaller, and the shrinking hurt. It was unpleasant, so unpleasant... It was cold, her hands half-numb from being outside for so long despite the thick mittens she wore, the land covered in deep snow, blinding and painful in the sunlight. The snow made a crunching sound with each step she walked. She saw herself grabbing a hold of one of the lower branches of an evergreen tree - she remembered eating the young sprouts of it during early summer when she was but a child, but now was winter, and the sprouts were wooden and the needles hard... Still, she ripped off a section of the branch, sticking it between her teeth and chewing. When you were this hungry, even the bitter taste of resin was preferable to the continued pangs of hunger.

Cold water sloshed over the edge of the bucket she was carrying, dripping over her feet and the wooden floorboards. It was a large bucket, cumbersome and heavy, but it was the only way she could get water to the large metal container at the end of the back room. Arms slightly shaking from the effort, she set the container she had been carrying down right where she stood, in the middle of the room, and stretched; her shoulders and back ached from the last handful of buckets. The room was dim; two tiny windows with four little panels of uneven dirty glass each did not let in much light. Glass was expensive; many people only had holes with shutters in their walls, if that...

It was raining; it had been a light drizzle, but now it was pouring. The sound of the raindrops hitting the ground had turned into a deep rumble. Or was it thunder she heard in the background of it? It smelled fresh ... and wet, but mostly fresh. She was running, her bare feet hitting the meadow, the blades of grass brushing against her calves, her one hand gripping the hem of her shirt, as if she were afraid that the wind might steal it, and the other pressing something against her chest. The raindrops were beating against her face; her shirt was soaked through and though. But she was smiling, and happy, and free! The rain was warm, and the day was no longer as smotheringly hot. Deep down she knew she was not supposed to be out in the rain, but it was fun, and she had the excuse of having been sent to retrieve the package from the village when the rain caught her...

She was tired, so tired... Her lower body hurt, she felt tired, weak, faint, even, but also strangely content and even ... happy? It was dark, quiet; it was night. She was half-sitting on a bed covered in not-quite white linen, and on her arms there rested a dear weight. She had looked up, and sighed gently; she did not want to move in order not to disturb the one she held. She blinked, though in darkness, it hardly mattered. All was well.

Wind was whipping at their face; their chest was heaving and falling in the rhythm of powerful wingbeats. Wings, dark, wide, powerful... They could feel those moving. Feel raw, unadultered power. Strength. Determination. Very strong sense of purpose, even if what their objective was had vanished from their mind for the time being. There was, however, the faint impression that it was something ominous, something wrong, that people would be hurt, innocent people, people that they did not want to hurt... That impression was coupled with the undeniable sense of forward progression and sheer unstoppability, determinism, the inability to alter the course of fate or even adjust one's own actions. Lack of control. They were but an automaton, and from that was born fear. Fear of not for one's own self, but of one's own self and the deeds one would eventually inevitably commit.

The yeast had raised the dough nicely; it was warm as she kneaded it, warm and soft. Despite her covering her hands in flour before she set to the task, some of the dough glued itself to her fingers as she was at the task. There was the desire to lift her hand and simply eat the dough clinging to her finger, but she ignored the temptation for the time being. Some of the dough was separated into three globs, rolled into thinner and longer strips between her hands, and then braided into a pretzel. Before that, her mother had also made pretzel-bread like this. The light was yellow-orange and danced a flickering dance. Her hair was held back by some manner of linen hat.

She was searching, frantically. On the table? No, not on the table... That had been the first place see looked, too - it was but a flat surface of wooden boards, there was no way she could have missed anything on it the first time. In the clothes chest? With shaking hands, she pulled out the clothes from the heavy wooden box, hastily casting those on the floor new to it, but alas, this action yielded no results. Why would she have put it there in the first place? Besides, she had looked there already, too. Just as hastily, she began folding the skirts and blouses, setting them back one by one. Why? Guess she could not tolerate seeing the mess even while she was still looking, and there was always the vague feeling that she could have pulled it out of the box along with the clothes, meaning that it could be on the floor and be unearthed as she puts the clothes away. Even if she was already going through the clothes chest, the illogical place for it to be in, for the second time.

Her throat ... it felt like no air could pass through it, as though it were contracting closing down on itself. There were painful stabs in her chest, her heart hurt - also much like someone were squeezing it just a notch too hard. Her mouth was opening and closing, but no sound was emitted. Her voice simply did not comply. Neither did her eyes. She kept blinking as they stung and her sight kept blurring. Finally, something wet and warm ran over her face. It could not be, could it? It could not be! At last, she could get a word from her mouth, though her voice sounded distant and detached, numb even.
"What ... what do you mean?" It could not be... She had misheard. She had definitely misheard. Or misunderstood. In any case, it was wrong! It had to be...

There was a glint of light and an unearthly glow. Something rumbled, the ground was wrong, it tilted, and she fell ... fell, fell, fell... Something snapped, and she hit a near-vertical surface; reflexively, she dug her fingers in. They had talons, and they rent the metal of the surface. She was only very slowly sliding down the surface she clung to, but yet she still felt like falling, falling, falling... The surface was hard, but it lacked temperature. She knew she had been injured, but she could not feel the pain, only the blood running down her back. Falling, falling, falling, but yet the surface before her eyes was still. She was no longer sliding down; her taloned fingers had dug in deep enough to carry her weight. The combination of falling and utter motionlessness made her nauseous and disoriented. She must not slip and fall again; that would be the end. There was not one thing more certain than that.

The axe was hefty - two feet of hard polished wooden shaft and a solid iron head. Her legs were rooted to ground, spread a bit wider than her shoulders. The axe she raised overhead, only to bring it down on the tree-trunk-segment before her, as thick as her waist and with a line through its heart already riddled with cuts from unsuccessful attempts of splitting it. The momentum the axe-head had gained from its own weight and her arms' strength was significant - it bit two inches deep, but this time, the trunk's fibres were torn apart as a crack began to crawl towards its base. The axe-head was stuck, but it was good. With a breath let out in a huff, she allowed herself a blink of an eye's worth of rest, before she raised the axe overhead again - with the entirety of the section of tree-trunk being lifted with it. Up in the air, she flipped the axe around, and then she brought it down again, the back of the axe-head hitting the surface of the base first. With its own weight, the tree-trunk pressed further onto the axe-blade upon impact, and the crack spread deeper. Another raise of the axe, another flip, and the trunk-segment split open fully, halves falling to two sides. The ground was dry hard dirt, covered in pieces of bark and wooden chips. To the right, there was a log wall, to the left grass; in the distance loomed a dark forest.

The chicken was brown - all their chickens were - and her orange eyes were fixed on her hand in what appeared to be disapproval. Chickens did not have facial expressions ... right? ... but yet she had seen ones stare at her in wide-eyed confusion, beaks slightly ajar, curious chicken doing their best to see what she held, and, as was the case with this one, apparently a disapproving chicken. Yet, she moved her hand closer still, seeing how the feathers of the already puffed-up chicken literally stood on ends till she looked almost twice the normal size. A notch closer, and the chicken's head darted forth, her beak hitting her knuckle. It hurt - not much, but enough for her to draw her hand back with a start. There was a minuscule piece of skin torn loose, barely a flake larger than pinhead, with just the faintest speck of red seeping out. But she only had to fetch the eggs...

The flames were dancing; the air of the night was cold, but the person she was resting against was warm. From somewhere, they had found an old blanket to cover their legs with. There were stars in the sky.
"My father used to know the names of many a constellation... The only one I really can find is the Great Bear. And the Northern Star." He let out something that was probably a short chuckle. "At least I'd always know which way is north on a clear starry night... Not that those occurred often."
His voice sounded so different when she had her ear resting against his chest. It was strange... Was this also how he heard his own voice? She could also hear his heartbeat, feel him breathing. It made her feel ... strange, but not in a bad way. She cared about him and, well, it ... being so close to him... It felt good, but also made her feel oddly ... nervous? No, nervous was not the correct word. On top of all, she was also tired after the long day and it was relaxing, to be like that. She felt as though she would fall asleep soon...
"Are you cold?" he asked, sounding mildly concerned.
"Mkmm..." she languidly mumbled in an attempt to reassure him. "No, I am good..."

Did this sun never raise nor truly set? Always with this twilight, always, no change, no life no nothing but her. It was a rocky field she was clambering over, rocky and unforgiving, merciless. Jagged edges and hard corners, from pebbles to massive boulders as tall as she was, all loose, spanning as far as the eye could see... There! A figure, motion, someone! At long last! She tried to hasten her clumsy clambering crawl over the unfeeling sharp rocks, pale as bleached slate but with edges as sharp as those of obsidian.
"Hey!?" Her voice was rasped and shrill, she felt thirst. The air was too dry, too riddled with dust; inhaling for the single shout nearly sent her into a coughing fit. She must catch up with them, if they did not hear her shouting...
As she tried to speed up her chase, she slipped and fell, skinned elbow leaving a bloody trail onto the rock before her face, her knee emanating white hot pain as it smack met the ground. Her eyes swelled with tears, not those of only plain, but also those of hopelessness and desperation. She must not lose this person, whoever this was... This figure who appeared and disappeared on the horizon, becoming obscured by a larger rock as they hopped down one and appearing again as they were climbing over the next.

Death takes a cruel toll; three memories it robbed, two were twisted and bent, but even on this darkest hour, two brief scenes were brought along, if bleak in nature...

It was warm and slightly musty, smelling of smoke; she was seated there, on a small rectangular stool, and her lap was covered by the woolen fabric of her skirt - horizontally striped, each stripe with its own color and pattern. One stripe - white with a chain of intricate rhombic symbols in black woven into it - especially stood out, perhaps because it was at just the right place for her eyes to fall onto. She could feel the uneven bark of the wooden stick she held in her left hand, the leathery handle of the knife in her right, and the resistance of the wood as she carved into it with the blade, a chip falling away with each skilled motion of hand. The knife's blade, longer than her hand from wrist to fingertips, glinted faintly in constantly moving yellowish-orange light.

Her stomach hurt with hunger; it was as if there was a hand squeezing it, or it was shrinking smaller, and the shrinking hurt. It was unpleasant, so unpleasant... It was cold, her hands half-numb from being outside for so long despite the thick mittens she wore, the land covered in deep snow, blinding and painful in the sunlight. The snow made a crunching sound with each step she walked. She saw herself grabbing a hold of one of the lower branches of an evergreen tree - she remembered eating the young sprouts of it during early summer when she was but a child, but now was winter, and the sprouts were wooden and the needles hard... Still, she ripped off a section of the branch, sticking it between her teeth and chewing. When you were this hungry, even the bitter taste of resin was preferable to the continued pangs of hunger.

The liquid was incredibly viscous, but yet fully transparent and clear ... like the purest water of a crystal spring, but only until you noticed the lazy, sluggish way it reacted to her steps, barely more liquid than jelly. There was the vague feeling that she should move on and bring the bucket to some place, but perhaps from simple morbid curiosity, she carefully lowered the bucket to the ground, its weight making her hands tremble, and knelt by its side. She saw her one hand gripping the edge of the bucket, and the other plunging deep into the viscous fluid.
It was cold. Very cold, as she realized after a second. Piercing, bone-shattering cold. As soon as the knowledge sunk in, she drew her hand out, but the fluid clung to her hand and wrist in a layer nigh an inch thick, cold globs of it dripping off and falling on her feet and the wooden floor. The cold, it hurt now, hurt so much... She tried to shake it off her hand, but that only lead to more of it falling off and onto her feet. Pain, so much pain.
She blinked to combat her vision blurring from the sheer pain, but nevertheless something made her raise her hand before her eyes and observe it in the faint grayish light falling from somewhere to the right; the fluid seemed still transparent for the most part, now barely a fifth of an inch thick after most had been shaken or fallen off, but nearing her skin, she could see it becoming faintly yellowish, then orange, then red.
Blood. Her blood. It was seeping into the liquid through her skin...

It was raining; it had been a light drizzle, but now it was pouring. The sound of the raindrops hitting the ground had turned into a deep rumble. Or was it thunder she heard in the background of it? It smelled fresh ... and wet, but mostly fresh. She was running, her bare feet hitting the meadow, the blades of grass brushing against her calves, her one hand gripping the hem of her shirt, as if she were afraid that the wind might steal it, and the other pressing something against her chest. The raindrops were beating against her face; her shirt was soaked through and though. But she was smiling, and happy, and free! The rain was warm, and the day was no longer as smotheringly hot. Deep down she knew she was not supposed to be out in the rain, but it was fun, and she had the excuse of having been sent to retrieve the package from the village when the rain caught her...

She was tired, so tired... Her lower body hurt, she felt tired, weak, faint, even, but also strangely content and even ... happy? It was dark, quiet; it was night. She was half-sitting on a bed covered in not-quite white linen, and on her arms there rested a dear weight. She had looked up, and sighed gently; she did not want to move in order not to disturb the one she held. She blinked, though in darkness, it hardly mattered. All was well.

Wind was whipping at their face; their chest was heaving and falling in the rhythm of powerful wingbeats. Wings, dark, wide, powerful... They could feel those moving. Feel raw, unadultered power. Strength. Determination. Very strong sense of purpose, even if what their objective was had vanished from their mind for the time being. There was, however, the faint impression that it was something ominous, something wrong, that people would be hurt, innocent people, people that they did not want to hurt... That impression was coupled with the undeniable sense of forward progression and sheer unstoppability, determinism, the inability to alter the course of fate or even adjust one's own actions. Lack of control. They were but an automaton, and from that was born fear. Fear of not for one's own self, but of one's own self and the deeds one would eventually inevitably commit.

The yeast had raised the dough nicely; it was warm as she kneaded it, warm and soft. Despite her covering her hands in flour before she set to the task, some of the dough glued itself to her fingers as she was at the task. There was the desire to lift her hand and simply eat the dough clinging to her finger, but she ignored the temptation for the time being. Some of the dough was separated into three globs, rolled into thinner and longer strips between her hands, and then braided into a pretzel. Before that, her mother had also made pretzel-bread like this. The light was yellow-orange and danced a flickering dance. Her hair was held back by some manner of linen hat.

She was searching, frantically. On the table? No, not on the table... That had been the first place see looked, too - it was but a flat surface of wooden boards, there was no way she could have missed anything on it the first time. In the clothes chest? With shaking hands, she pulled out the clothes from the heavy wooden box, hastily casting those on the floor new to it, but alas, this action yielded no results. Why would she have put it there in the first place? Besides, she had looked there already, too. Just as hastily, she began folding the skirts and blouses, setting them back one by one. Why? Guess she could not tolerate seeing the mess even while she was still looking, and there was always the vague feeling that she could have pulled it out of the box along with the clothes, meaning that it could be on the floor and be unearthed as she puts the clothes away. Even if she was already going through the clothes chest, the illogical place for it to be in, for the second time.

The chicken was brown - all their chickens were - and her orange eyes were fixed on her hand in what appeared to be disapproval. Chickens did not have facial expressions ... right? ... but yet she had seen ones stare at her in wide-eyed confusion, beaks slightly ajar, curious chicken doing their best to see what she held, and, as was the case with this one, apparently a disapproving chicken. Yet, she moved her hand closer still, seeing how the feathers of the already puffed-up chicken literally stood on ends till she looked almost twice the normal size. A notch closer, and the chicken's head darted forth, her beak hitting her knuckle. It hurt - not much, but enough for her to draw her hand back with a start. There was a minuscule piece of skin torn loose, barely a flake larger than pinhead, with just the faintest speck of red seeping out. But she only had to fetch the eggs...

She was starving. She had been starving once before, had she not? ...But it had been a different time and a different place, if not a different world altogether. It was a cave, or at least she thought so; it was utterly and completely dark, damp, and filled with rocks. A hiding place. No place for the sighted; she moved by hand. Each of her motions was almost startlingly loud - the pebbles she slipped on, the rustle of her garments, the metallic crape of an axehead against some calcified mineral deposit. The air was cool, stale, and there was no sound but those made by her and water dripping, constantly, endlessly. It was maddening. There was this odd smell, smell that was not wet rock, not quite that of mold, but... But... She could not recall? Why could she not recall?
Her hands happened onto something that was not rock, something softer and more yielding. It crumbled when she touched it; it was fragile. Edible? Without much thought, she tried to scoop it up, stuff it into her mouth even if it tasted bland and felt textureless, even if some nagging feeling kept insisting it could be poisonous. Anything was better than the continued pangs of hunger ... right?

The flames were dancing; the air of the night was cold, but the person she was resting against was warm. From somewhere, they had found an old blanket to cover their legs with. There were stars in the sky.
"My father used to know the names of many a constellation... The only one I really can find is the Great Bear. And the Northern Star." He let out something that was probably a short chuckle. "At least I'd always know which way is north on a clear starry night... Not that those occurred often."
His voice sounded so different when she had her ear resting against his chest. It was strange... Was this also how he heard his own voice? She could also hear his heartbeat, feel him breathing. It made her feel ... strange, but not in a bad way. She cared about him and, well, it ... being so close to him... It felt good, but also made her feel oddly ... nervous? No, nervous was not the correct word. On top of all, she was also tired after the long day and it was relaxing, to be like that. She felt as though she would fall asleep soon...
"Are you cold?" he asked, sounding mildly concerned.
"Mkmm..." she languidly mumbled in an attempt to reassure him. "No, I am good..."

The land was bathed in an eternal sourceless light. It was a rocky field she was clambering over, rocky and unforgiving, merciless, everlasting, endless. Jagged edges and hard corners, from pebbles to massive boulders as tall as she was, all loose, spanning as far as the eye could see... Unfeeling sharp rocks, pale as bleached slate but with edges as sharp as those of obsidian. There was motion, she was sure of it, motion that should not be there. No! That was just the haze of heat playing tricks on her eyes, for rocks could not move, no. They ... those were but lifeless things, objects. And there she was wrong.
There was a rumble, like that of a landslide, and the rocks, big and small alike, went in for the kill. They went for her, rushing together, and there, in the middle of the endless field, the jagged edges tore her to pieces and ground up her bones.

Was it still there? She was breathing heavily, as if from physical exertion, and her body was covered in a light layer of sweat. Was there any use in running at all, or would it just find her by smell? The surface behind her back was cold and hard and sturdy - it would not let it through. But the sides ... it was all open, it was a canyon, she could not get out or hide but for in some small crevice, and surely it would be ... patient. It was to the left, she knew, thus she will have to go to the right. But how long till the canyon spits or she comes to an obstacle she cannot cross? Would it not be better to fight instead? The axe was ... heavy.

Three memories were lost in the last demise, two were twisted and bent, and three remained from the last brief pseudo-life...

There was no way someone could survive anything like that; she dropped herself down the last ledge and turned to look at the corpse. He had fallen, from high above - from where she had been before she had made her own much more slower and more meticulous descent down here herself. The man's head was hanging limply to the side, a trickle of drying blood running down a rock, his one arm was out to the side at an odd angle, but otherwise he almost looked normal, save for the fact that bare sharp rocks made for a peculiar resting place. Two sensations were stronger than others: an oddly biting deep regret and the lingering realization that there ... were others? Also the feeling that she should take what could be taken; the dead had no use for anything.

It was warm and slightly musty, smelling of smoke; she was seated there, on a small rectangular stool, and her lap was covered by the woolen fabric of her skirt - horizontally striped, each stripe with its own color and pattern. One stripe - white with a chain of intricate rhombic symbols in black woven into it - especially stood out, perhaps because it was at just the right place for her eyes to fall onto. She could feel the uneven bark of the wooden stick she held in her left hand, the leathery handle of the knife in her right, and the resistance of the wood as she carved into it with the blade, a chip falling away with each skilled motion of hand. The knife's blade, longer than her hand from wrist to fingertips, glinted faintly in constantly moving yellowish-orange light.

Her stomach hurt with hunger; it was as if there was a hand squeezing it, or it was shrinking smaller, and the shrinking hurt. It was unpleasant, so unpleasant... It was cold, her hands half-numb from being outside for so long despite the thick mittens she wore, the land covered in deep snow, blinding and painful in the sunlight. The snow made a crunching sound with each step she walked. She saw herself grabbing a hold of one of the lower branches of an evergreen tree - she remembered eating the young sprouts of it during early summer when she was but a child, but now was winter, and the sprouts were wooden and the needles hard... Still, she ripped off a section of the branch, sticking it between her teeth and chewing. When you were this hungry, even the bitter taste of resin was preferable to the continued pangs of hunger.

He was standing before someone he could not see, since his head was bowed. He was kneeling, and there was a distinct sense of it being an important event of some description - especially for him personally. There were words being spoken, words of his deeds and recounting of his duties, but he could not decipher them. The time for him to speak his oath would be soon.

The liquid was incredibly viscous, but yet fully transparent and clear ... like the purest water of a crystal spring, but only until you noticed the lazy, sluggish way it reacted to her steps, barely more liquid than jelly. There was the vague feeling that she should move on and bring the bucket to some place, but perhaps from simple morbid curiosity, she carefully lowered the bucket to the ground, its weight making her hands tremble, and knelt by its side. She saw her one hand gripping the edge of the bucket, and the other plunging deep into the viscous fluid.
It was cold. Very cold, as she realized after a second. Piercing, bone-shattering cold. As soon as the realization sunk in, she drew her hand out, but the fluid clung to her hand and wrist in a layer nigh an inch thick, cold globs of it dripping off and falling on her feet and the wooden panels beneath her feet. The cold, it hurt now, hurt so much... She tried to shake it off her hand, but that only lead to more of it falling off and onto her feet. Pain, so much pain.
She blinked to combat her vision blurring from the sheer pain, but nevertheless something made her raise her hand before her eyes and observe it in the faint grayish light falling from somewhere to the right; the fluid seemed still transparent for the most part, now barely a fifth of an inch thick after most had been shaken or fallen off, but nearing her skin, she could see it becoming faintly yellowish, then orange, then red. Blood. Her blood.
It was seeping into the liquid through her skin...

She was tired, so tired... Her lower body hurt, she felt tired, weak, faint, even, but also strangely content and even ... happy? It was dark, quiet; it was night. She was half-sitting on a bed covered in not-quite white linen, and on her arms there rested a dear weight. She had looked up, and sighed gently; she did not want to move in order not to disturb the one she held. She blinked, though in darkness, it hardly mattered. All was well.

Wind was whipping at their face; their chest was heaving and falling in the rhythm of powerful wingbeats. Wings, dark, wide, powerful... They could feel those moving. Feel raw, unadultered power. Strength. Determination. Very strong sense of purpose, even if what their objective was had vanished from their mind for the time being. There was, however, the faint impression that it was something ominous, something wrong, that people would be hurt, innocent people, people that they did not want to hurt... That impression was coupled with the undeniable sense of forward progression and sheer unstoppability, determinism, nay, fatalism, the inability to alter the course of fate or even adjust one's own actions. Lack of control. They were but an automaton, and from that was born fear. Fear of not for one's own self, but of one's own self and the deeds one would eventually inevitably commit.

The yeast had raised the dough nicely; it was warm as she kneaded it, warm and soft. Despite her covering her hands in flour before she set to the task, some of the dough glued itself to her fingers as she was at the task. There was the desire to lift her hand and simply eat the dough clinging to her finger, but she ignored the temptation for the time being. Some of the dough was separated into three globs, rolled into thinner and longer strips between her hands, and then braided into a pretzel. Before that, her mother had also made pretzel-bread like this. The light was yellow-orange and danced a flickering dance. Her hair was held back by some manner of linen hat.

She was searching, frantically. On the table? No, not on the table... That had been the first place see looked, too - it was but a flat surface of wooden boards, there was no way she could have missed anything on it the first time. In the clothes chest? With shaking hands, she pulled out the clothes from the heavy wooden box, hastily casting those on the floor new to it, but alas, this action yielded no results. Why would she have put it there in the first place? Besides, she had looked there already, too. Just as hastily, she began folding the skirts and blouses, setting them back one by one. Why? Guess she could not tolerate seeing the mess even while she was still looking, and there was always the vague feeling that she could have pulled it out of the box along with the clothes, meaning that it could be on the floor and be unearthed as she puts the clothes away. Even if she was already going through the clothes chest, the illogical place for it to be in, for the second time.

The woman's eyes were flickering from side to side, then fixing on her again, wide and ... terrified. She looked malnourished, starving, and her clothes were but tattered rags. Terrified ... of her?
"I am not like these things," she insisted, a pale, muscled arm stretching out in front of herself, fingers just a notch too long and nails sturdy, grown-out and dirty. She held her palm towards the woman, and in her hand there was nothing. It was an universally reassuring gesture: See? No weapon. She was armed herself, but her weapons were remained put away; the woman had none she could see on her.
"I am not like them, I won't be a danger to you, I won't take anything from you..." This time, it was almost a plea.
There was indeed nothing she could potentially desired that the woman had. In many a sense, she was poorer than her. There was nothing to take from her ... save from her flesh and bones.
"...Not like them." She did not know who she was trying to convince - herself, or the woman.

She was starving. She had been starving at least once before, had she not? ...But it had been a different time and a different place, if not a different world altogether. It was a cave, or at least she thought so; it was utterly and completely dark, damp, and filled with rocks. A hiding place. No place for the sighted; she moved by hand. Each of her motions was almost startlingly loud - the pebbles she slipped on, the rustle of her garments, the metallic crape of an axehead against some calcified mineral deposit. The air was cool, stale, and there was no sound but those made by her and water dripping, constantly, endlessly. It was maddening. There was this odd smell, smell that was not wet rock, not quite that of mold, but... But... She could not recall? Why could she not recall?
Her hands happened onto something that was not rock, something softer and more yielding. It crumbled when she touched it; it was fragile. Edible? Without much thought, she tried to scoop it up, stuff it into her mouth even if it tasted bland and felt textureless, even if some nagging feeling kept insisting it could be poisonous. Anything was better than the continued pangs of hunger ... right?

The land was bathed in an eternal sourceless light. It was a rocky field she was clambering over, rocky and unforgiving, merciless, everlasting, endless. Jagged edges and hard corners, from pebbles to massive boulders as tall as she was, all loose, spanning as far as the eye could see... Unfeeling sharp rocks, pale as bleached slate but with edges as sharp as those of obsidian. There was motion, she was sure of it, motion that should not be there. No! That was just the haze of heat playing tricks on her eyes, for rocks could not move, no. They ... those were but lifeless things, objects. And there she was wrong.

She was breathing heavily, as if from physical exertion, and her body was covered in a light layer of sweat. The surface behind her back was cold and hard and sturdy; roughly the same adjectives could be said to characterize the axe in her hands, too. Why axe, and not sword? The axe was heftier; it simply had more weight behind it, and thus it just seemed that it would hurt more if she were to bash the something's face in with it. And ... she had had the axe for far longer. It was meant for chopping wood, not combat, but she knew how to use it. Clutching it tightly in two, she stepped out to face her foe.