It was cold to that point where your breath did not really even mist in front of your face anymore. Even the hardest pants would earn you little more than a thin trailing of barely visible white leaking from the corner of your mouth. The trees cracked both under the weight of the snow that dragged down their branches and that peculiar snapping one heard when the temperature dropped low enough. There were no scents- it was too freezing. The chill seared the nostrils past sensing, but if one could smell anything, it would smell of imminent snowfall, even though the sun blazed in red and orange glory on the horizon, the sun fleeing from the indigo darkness that threatened it every dusk and not a single brilliant pink cloud hung in the upper atmosphere. It would smell of pine boughs that released their scent as their pliable bark bent and splintered, and of cold, sterile death. Dead winter in the north was an unfriendly and uninviting place. It urged people with stony eyes and jerky movements to go back inside and have a nice cup of hot cider or tea, or perhaps even some hot chocolate (the kind with the little marshmallows that always melt much too quickly) as you sit by the crackling fire fueled by wood you cut in the much more kindly autumn with its brilliant colors which warned you, like a venomous frog, of the imminent danger of the following season. Dry, pixie dust snow blew off the branches in swirling eddies of fiery hue as they caught the fading rays of the sun, sparkling for all the world like tiny fireflies. It was not advisable to walk around this place if not actively on fire, but at the very least a very heavy coat or two were required for basic survival. A man could die quickly in a place like this, and that was exactly what Arte seemed to be doing.

Arte's last steps were labored and stiff, as if his very blood was freezing yet as he lived. He was far beyond cold, now. He had stopped feeling much of anything about half an hour back or so. His brain seemed to have stopped working too, for the most part. All that kept him going was this unknowable instinct and a thought that would not leave him that he had to get away. Away from what, he did not know. Actually questioning what he was even doing out here was a process beyond him at this point. Even his sight was so dim that it appeared to him that it was already late into the twilight; the barest outlines of trees the only thing keeping him from bumping into them as he struggled onward. His hands were frozen to the golden shaft of his staff as he used it like a third leg to pull himself ever forward. From his arms dangled tattered remains of what looked like to be the very sort of heavy jacket that was required for basic survival and a bag that probably had at one point carried everything else one would need to live out here for at least a few days' time. It was an obvious last-ditch effort to keep himself warm enough to live on, but as it grew colder and colder, and the sun slinked behind the mountains in the distance, it became more apparent that his attempts had been in vain.

He did not so much stumble as his knees slowly gave out under him, and with several jerky motions, he slid down to the ground. His hands, still frozen in their death-grip, slid down the staff until they were so far down that the staff could topple over into the deep frozen powder. His face hit shortly after, but no fiery explosion of cold and pain awaited it. Arte was far too numb to any longer even know where he was, what he was doing, or even who he was, let alone what the condition of his skin was in. He had reached the end of the line. Really, not so much had been asked of him. Sure, his existence likely would have been miserable, but is not some existence better than none at all? Well, Arte was certainly not the one to ask the riddles of philosophy. In fact, all that the young and foolhardy Arte really knew at that moment was that everything was black.

-

Warmth was, quite frankly, the very last thing Arte expected to feel. Well, unless he died and went to some sort of afterlife, and in that case he expected to be very warm indeed. As it stood, he was marginally uncomfortably warm, which was a much better alternative than any that immediately came to mind. Of course, such thoughts did not linger in his mind. Anything that came to his mind, really, seemed to slide right off like an oil slick on water. That inability to keep a thought was almost blissful. Arte was very unused to spending any amount of time not thinking, s, for the time being, it was a welcome respite. It turned out that he did not spend much time in this thoughtless state, so when the darkness came and took him fare less forcefully this time, all he really had been able to take stock of was that he was warm and very likely not dead. And being not dead was most likely a very good thing to be, but one never knew.

Arte came to very slowly, and for all that he was warm, his body still felt frozen. He could barely twitch. His eyes felt glued shut, as well as his mouth. After a few moments of trying to figure out what was going on, he decided against it. It hit him very suddenly that he was extremely sore in most every joint, his head was pounding fit to fall off, and he felt generally nauseous and unwell. That would likely explain why he felt so incredibly warm at this juncture, and he tried fitfully to wiggle a bit out of the blankets, to no avail. He attempted to open his eyes, but when his retinas were greeted with a shower of headache-worsening sparks, he screwed them tightly shut once more, pretending like the whole episode never happened. It felt like his thoughts were covered with some sort of sticky, slimy film. Keeping a thought for just a few seconds simply was not working out for him. He could determine, however, that he was ill, but his body would not quite let him go back to sleep yet. He hated when that happened, but in his recollection he could not remember being so ill before. This was a new but far from exciting experience. He did briefly wonder why he was so sick, but could not quite grasp the situation in its entirety. He remembered… something… about being frozen to his very bones and possibly something about a near-death experience, but overall what had happened eluded him. It was best not to dwell on it anyway was his conclusion.

Carefully, he made a second attempt at opening his eyes. The room was thankfully dark, but it took a few moments for the brightly-colored spots to swim out of his vision. It left him staring at a dark orange-grey ceiling which flickered fitfully from what he assumed was a fireplace somewhere in the room. He shifted a bit and heard the bed creaking under him. A bed. That was nice. The realization dawned on him slowly as he turned his head to look at the rest of the room that he had not the faintest idea of where he was. Once the full realization hit him, like a startled deer he attempted to jump across the room and flee. However, he was barely able to sit up at all before his head and stomach caught up to him, making him flop back down with a groan. At least the adrenaline gave him the energy necessary to curl up on his side as he tried to bite back his nausea. The room swirled around him in an uneven whirlpool on a varying axis. It was overall quite unpleasant.

A noise outside the thin crack of yellow light that he assumed was the door to get in here nearly made Arte jump out of his skin. His hands reflexively clutched at the blankets as this unknown individual opened the door, flooding the room with light. This caused several miniature explosions to go off in Arte's head, and finally the gates to sleep opened once more. He fled from the light into the darkness of unconsciousness. The last thing he heard was "Oh, look! Our guest is awa- oh. Huh. Um… nevermind."