Day 30

I slid forward, and I felt the cold sting my face, I opened my eyes looking back, just a short slope onto a frozen lake. I looked forward, seeing the icy pillar in the distance, and I started running. The sounds of my boots smacking the ice resounding through the crisp air. I felt the ice beneath me bounce and give, cracks forming beneath my feet. I looked down and saw a fish swimming. The ice was thinner than I thought, but I kept running. I felt it before I heard it, a tremor, then an explosion, the ice behind me had started to break, chasing me. I remembered as I ran, I had done this before, but this time I was going to make it to the top.

If I wanted to get to it, I would need speed and height, I was gaining the speed alright, but the spikes I had leaped off before had yet to appear. As though on cue, cracks of ice appeared in front of me, tips of the spikes forming ten yards ahead, and I sped up, riding it up, and landing in a slide starting the sprint with my momentum. I reached down, and felt my ax still in my hammer loop, and pulled it out, holding it to the side with my right hand, the Manaphage on my left hand appearing in my dream, still mitten like. The crack behind me was getting faster, the crack and echo starting to sound like a roar, I moved faster.

Have you ever felt a craving for speed, I know, I usually write these journals not expecting anyone but me to read them, but if someone finds these tomes, or they make it back home, I have to ask, have you felt that lust for speed. That call to go faster, it doesn't matter if your running, driving, biking, hell, gaming! Have you ever felt that call for the wind at your back, the rush you feel being pushed back by inertia, and you fight it, going faster, stomping on the gas, pedaling hard on the highest gear, or running down the steepest hill in your neighborhood? I felt that running in my dream, that addictive call to go faster than ever, and I felt my legs pushing, working overtime. I sprinted, leaped and slid faster then I'd ever ran before, and it felt... right.

I tore my long coat off, and felt the resistance decrees, I threw off my jacket, and was running wearing a ragged t-shirt, and felt it flapping in the wind, and I ripped it off, for the first time in a while looking at my chest fully, realizing I looked emaciated. I reached up to pull off my hat, but it was long gone. I looked back and saw my clothes speared on spikes, hanging there like dead flags. I turned back and saw that I was getting closer to the pillar of ice, piercing the heavens. I heard it then, like the roar of a beast, looking back I saw the crack in the ice speed up like someone was ripping apart a piece of cloth, and it split, becoming two cracks. Gaining further speed, the cracks passed me with a cacophony of sound, ripping ahead, and I saw in the distance I saw it.

The cracks reached the tower of ice, and shattered it at the base, creating an explosion of ice. The tower, the pillar of ice and strength that I took it for, started to fall away from me. I did the only thing I could and pounded the ice as hard as I could, greedily going faster, leaning forward so much I was able to use my ax to pull myself to the spears even faster. I was doing everything to move faster, and it was working, the tower had already reached an angle of 10 degrees when I got to the shattered base, using the debris as ramps and launch pads to fly into the air, windmilling my arms for balance.

I connected with the falling tower with the Manaphage first, melting into it and creating a handhold. I pushed off, conserving what inertia I could, and started rapidly climbing up, shattering ice with the ax blade and pockmarking it with the Manaphage, both of which made perfect footholds to push off even harder. I climbed the falling tower, feeling it slowly gather speed. Now at 15 degrees and gaining. I was picking up speed again, the pattern of movement becoming more and more ingrained in my body when I felt the tower tip beyond 45 degrees, and I was able to almost run again. The ice was more like a rough rock than a slippery slope. I picked up my pace, high in the sky, sprinting up a falling pillar, and I felt myself feel lighter, the pillar was falling away from me faster than gravity pulled me, like a fast elevator. Every push with my feet was easier and easier, I was barely making contact with it, when I saw the end of the tower, it came to a point abruptly. It was almost flat, at around 70 degrees when I reached the end, my feet barely touching the pillar when I launched off with the speed of a bullet, my arms outstretched like I was flying.

My eyes shot open, and I felt hot and sweaty, and I tore off my sleeping bag and clothes and, in just my underwear, pulled myself out and dived into one of the piles of snow I had made. I was burning up before, but as soon as I crashed into the pile, I felt the cold fill my body, waking me up, and cooling me off. I slowly got up, and looked up, seeing small wisps of steam rising up from the pile, an imprint of my body now standing out from the snow. I looked at my body, seeing how dirty I was, there was dirt and grime all over me, caked-on in layers. I grabbed a handful of snow and started to use it to wipe myself down, not caring about the cold.

After what felt like an hour I looked down, seeing a black puddle of dirty water below me, and half the pile of snow had been used. I had washed myself the best I could with the snow, leaving my body feeling cleaner, and my hair drenched, I wish I had a knife or scissors to cut my hair with, because it was starting to get long, and a pain to manage. I grabbed a handful of snow, white and clean and bit down on it, it tasted terrible, but I didn't care, and I rinsed my mouth out, refreshing myself with the cold snow, almost giving myself a brain freeze.

Eventually, I got the fire going again, finding the now partially frozen bowl of meat stock I had set aside a day or two ago, and put that over the fire to thaw out. As I did that, I reached into my hut, and pulled out all my clothes and sleeping bag, and sniffed at them, more disgusted by the smell than the taste of the snow before, and started to wash them with snow, wringing water through them, and making an even larger puddle of black rancid water. I took a break and sat down by the fire on my leather robe, still in just my underwear. I pulled the bowl of liquid closer to me, my stomach rumbling, and took a sip, tasting the refreshing taste of the sweet and spicy lemon mint, it didn't work for the meat, but as a drink, mixed with the snow, it was pretty damn good. I laid back on my robe, and relaxed a bit, remembering the wild dream I had, and how I woke up panting and sweaty, like I had been there. In the dream, I hadn't been nearly this covered in dirt and grime, but that might have just been because I didn't know how filthy I was.

I laid there for a good hour, the sun shining warmly on me, and the fire by my feet merrily burning away. I relaxed there for while, feeling clean, and I didn't realize it before, but my feet didn't feel sore anymore, it was like when you take off your shoes after a long day, but it had been like twenty days. Eventually, I got back up, and took care of cleaning the rest of my clothes, rinsing them until the water I wrung from them was clear, and then I finally dried them out, leaving them feeling stiff, god I missed proper cleaning stuff, I was going to have to do this more often, it was relaxing, and helped me feel more there, that sense of normalcy helping bring me back to a familiar mindset.

I put my pants back on, then my t-shirt, then instead of my jackets, I just threw the leather robe on, loose and comfortable. I felt lighter, and unrestricted, my movements not constrained by the clothing I had. Though I hadn't added the sleeves yet, I decided that I should make bracers instead, and maybe reinforce parts and bits with the snake hide, It had been much stronger than I thought, the talons of the bird-beast hadn't been able to do more than scratch it, the only problem was attaching it to the robe. I had sewn a couple of pockets on to the robe, deep and long, and several straps on the back for spears, and my bat. After putting those in their respective slots and loops, I felt heavier, more like when I was wearing all my clothes, and I jogged around the campsite to test the jiggling of the tools and marked down where I had to fix it up.

It took all day, doing little things here and there, at a certain point I worked on a log to be more stable so it would make a better stool, I raised the walls of the hut by a foot, and I made a fair amount of jerky. I enjoyed myself, for the most part, feeling like I was camping more than I was stuck in the wilderness for survival. It took me by surprise when I looked up and saw the sun sinking beyond the treeline, I had spent the day working on improving my home, and I felt good about it. I was sitting on my newly improved stool, and working at my new knife, sharpening it on the rock slab I had grabbed the day before, having flattened it to a fair amount, enough to put a better edge on the knife than the ax and chipping hammer could. The next day I planned on finally entering the under forest again, my talon knife was hopefully going to be strong enough to mark the bark of the trees. Otherwise, I had a much slower method I had thought of, but equally effective.

That night I went to bed, feeling satisfied, and much more comfortable than I had, the leather robe under me, and the sleeping bag under that, my now clean long coat and jacket acting as a blanket. I entered my meditation quickly, and soon after fell asleep into a deep slumber.