I – The Mountain

It was a strange feeling, albeit not an unfamiliar one. Mist awoke to find that he did not recognize his surroundings. He came to very slowly at first, then jolted up with a start. It was pitch-black all around him, with no semblance of anything familiar. He was trapped in a featureless purgatory.

Soon enough the realization dawned, that Mist was in the relative safety of the cave he called home, but it took a long time for the jolt of terror to fully fade away. He lay there in the dark and the quiet, waiting for his racing heart to subside. For the vast amount of time he'd lived here now, it would still happen on occasion; he would wake up and not know where he was.

His eyes began to adjust. Amidst the pressing blackness, the wavy blue light from the underground lake was visible in the distance.

Though he remained weary, he was unsuccessful in returning to sleep. His mind was much too stimulated now. And the hunger. It gnawed at him. He re-opened his eyes, stood up, and made his way through the cavern. He needed to find food.

Mist passed by bioluminescent pool, with its vibrant, swirling light. Even though the water itself was still, the blue rays of light swirled around and around, always in motion. He had no idea what caused the water to glow and swirl like it did; he had never seen anything like it. It was eerie and beautiful at the same time.

What made it all the more strange was that there were other, smaller ponds throughout the cave where the water did not glow. Why, then, was this one so different from the others? He'd been unnerved by the glowing pond back when he'd discovered the cave all those long months ago, and he was still unnerved by it today. But it was mesmerizing too. Often he would lie in front of the pool and gaze into its deep blue depths for hours on end.

For a long time he'd been afraid to actually touch the water. Until one day, when he worked up the courage. With the very tip of his paw, he touched it, once, and yanked his paw right back. He waited, anxiously, but nothing happened. Then he touched the water again, just a little longer and a little deeper, before pulling his paw back out. Still the water had no apparent effect on his body. Although he was shocked to discover, in the midst of the cold cavern, that the water was quite warm. He touched it a third time, for even longer. It was quite comfortably warm… and yet… it was also uncharacteristically warm considering how high of an altitude this was. One of many mysterious things about the pond that he would probably never have the answer to.

Still, he had never allowed himself to fully submerge into the depths. He had never been a good swimmer, but it went beyond his fear of drowning. It was his fear of the pool itself. There was something unnatural about it, even if he did not know why.

Beyond the pool, the cavern floor began to slope upward. Very gradually, then abruptly. The floor leveled out at the top of the cave, beyond which the mouth was visible, a white beacon amidst a sea of darkness. As he approached the cavern exit, his footsteps slowed down to a stop. A sharp trickle of fear raced through him. This was the trickle of fear he felt every time he was about to go outside.

The mountainside cave had been his home for a long time. Although the cave itself was not without its dangers, it contained many places where he could hide away and escape notice. Once he left the cave, however, he would much more vulnerable be out in the open…

It was the Flyer that Mist feared most of all. It was at nighttime when the Flyer would usually come out to hunt. Usually, but not always. Mist had seen the Flyer during the day too, but much less frequently. Thus, whenever Mist needed to leave the cave to gather food, he would do so during the day. It wasn't safe, but it was safer.

The Flyer had been hunting Mist for a long, long time, even if the frequency of their encounters had been erratic. On luckier occasions, Mist would go months in a row without encountering the Flyer. But he had since gotten smart enough to know that the gaps were always temporary. The Flyer would return. She always did.

Despite the fear that threatened to cripple him entirely as he stood at the cave mouth, it needed to be done. His supply of leaves back in the cave was running low. He needed to find more sustenance, and soon. He took a big, deep breath. Then he stepped out from the cave and onto the frozen mountainside. Once outside, he remained where he was for a moment and scanned his surroundings. No sign of any other life… yet…

He made his way from the cave entrance and journeyed across the western slope. A slow downhill trek along the side of the mountain. The changing seasons did not seem to have any impact on the weather in these parts. Here, it was always cold. Here, where the snow never melted. This was where his white skin was helpful, for he blended in so well with the snow-covered landscape. He still felt deeply vulnerable even then, but his ability to blend in so well had saved him from predators and other dangers on numerous occasions. He would almost certainly have been long gone by now otherwise.

When he was younger, the other threehorns would often make fun of him for his unique skin colour, and he had grown resentful of it. Resentful of both the other threehorns, and of his white skin itself. It was only in the following years, once he'd been separated and he came to live on his own, that he had grown proud of his unusual appearance. Not simply because it had saved him so many times, but because it was unique to him. It represented who he was. Never again would he be ashamed of that… even if there was no-one around to see him now. If only they could.

Along the way, he noticed his leftover footprints that were still faintly visible from the last time he had come this way. The pang of fear trickled through him yet again. Next time, he would need to take a different route, lest he end up revealing his hideout.

Despite his wariness, the rest of his journey carried on uneventfully, and eventually he began to feel a little more at ease. He looked out beyond the mountain. The skyline had a surreal quality to it in these high mountain ranges, with a perpetually wavy, hazy appearance. The sky was bright green around the horizon and dark blue above it, even in the middle of the day. Even on days like today when the sun was not covered by any clouds, the sky surrounding the sun would remain a deep blue. Although Mist had since grown accustomed to it, it was an amazingly bizarre sight all the same.

As he gazed at the green and blue sky, he tried to remember how long he had lived here now. But the days had blurred together, with no way to distinguish between the seasons. And it had been such a long time already, Mist found himself losing track of time more and more. His fourteenth birthday would have passed not that long ago… or was it his fifteenth…?

Further down the mountain, he arrived at the evergreen forest. He grazed on some of the trees, all the while carefully and continually glancing behind himself to make sure nothing was sneaking up behind him…

At last, he felt full and satiated. He gathered more leaves into a pile on a dead, stray piece of bark. Then began the long uphill trek back to his cave while pulling along his pile of food, all as he kept an ever-close eye on his surroundings. His heart pounded more and more as evening came about and he was still climbing the mountain, but he was able to make it back home just before nightfall hit. He breathed a deep sigh of relief the moment he was inside. He'd cut that one too close.

He descended deep into the cavern. He stashed away his spare leaves into his food reserve, and then he drifted off into an uneasy sleep…

It came to him in a dream, as it always did. The dreams always played out similar, with only small variations each time.

He stood alone in the marshland. That was always the same. He would wander through the eerie, perpetually gloomy landscape, lost and alone. Sometimes, it was because he was searching for his herd; his mother and father most of all. Sometimes, it wasn't necessarily his herd he searched for, but any sign of life, threehorn or otherwise. And then sometimes, he simply did not know what it was he was searching for.

Despite the variations, the dreams would always end the same way. Whatever he was searching for, he never found it.

In this dream in particular, it was his mother and father he was trying to find. Even though he still did not find them, he could always recall their faces. Their faces remained as vivid in his memory as they always had been. Yet there was another face too. A much younger female. She looked so familiar to him. But… how could that be? How could her face be familiar if he had never met her?

He ran desperately through the marshlands, chasing after his parents, or at least their memory.

Then he awoke with a start. He was back in the dark cave.