The Miko in the Snow

The brightness of my Stardust Nova explosion faded. All around me were cold clouds, passing upwards higher into the air. Or actually, I was dropping below them like a stone.

Great. I was falling out of the sky again. At least I have some experience with this situation, for better or worse.

I’ll just spawn my wings and…

FWOOSH!

As both my wings spread out, they were numb and unresponsive. The sedative must have still been in affect!

“Oh Craaap!”

PWOOOF!

Head first, right into a pile of fluffy snow!

The good news was that either the snow broke my fall, or something prevented me from taking any damage. I wasn’t hurting in the slightest.

Is this some cruel joke that fate kept playing on me? An angel, falling out of heaven?

Anyways, their were other developments that needed my attention. The first thing I noticed as I dusted the snow off myself was that I was in a really pretty white dress, one I’d seen before…I also was a lot taller.

That could only mean one thing...

“Oh! I’m an adult again!” I spun around, letting my dress flow along with me. “Yay!”

This happened to me once before. This older form of myself was my internal avatar, used in computer programs and simulations. It’s how I see myself in my head, I think.

On that same note, I probably wasn’t in reality. I still had a few more years in me before I was a big girl. Rather then a demon controlled town, or dingy dungeon castle, I was in an evergreen forest during winter time.

I checked my map, but the environmental data wasn’t updating. I was getting that same feeling I got from the last dimension, so I definitely wasn’t out of this nightmare just yet.

A heavy blizzard suddenly started touching down around me. The snow was piling up unnaturally quickly.

“What is this!?” I shouted against the brutal wind and snowfall.

“Kaassa…”

There was a distant sound, something like a cat calling out into the night.

“Asssaaan...”

Assa…assassin? What was that voice saying?

It sounded so far away, but it was much closer than I thought.

“Kaaa…”

The sound faded, then it stopped.

I had a good idea of what direction the sound was coming from, but no way to know for sure if that was it.

Now the snow was really picking up, coming down like blankets over the environment. In mere moments, whoever was just calling out would be buried underneath it for good.

It took me a minute to pinpoint where I was going, but I managed to find a clearing in the forest. There was something red in the snow.

As I reached down to grab it, I noticed that it was pants. Someone was butt up under the snow!

They were small, even smaller than I was when I in my normal form. Definitely a child. I started to dig them out, but the snow just kept pilling on.

“I won’t let you go!”

Both my hands reached out. Waves of stardust energy radiated out of me.

All the snow around us vaporized, clearing enough space for me to see a little girl on the grass. She had a white top with baggy red pants. I think the Kanai people call them miko outfits.

Her body was too cold. She was in critical condition and needed to be warmed up, otherwise she’d die of hypothermia.

I grabbed her, luckily I was older now, so she was easy to carry around.

A light flickered deep in the forest. I chased that light, because the little miko girl’s life depended on it.

“Stay with me, everything will be okay!” I said.

It felt like the weather was fighting me here. I kept pushing through the snow, but it kept falling harder.

Was the girl still okay? Her vitals were fading. I had to find her shelter and care, or she’d be done for.

There weren’t any options around me for shelter, I had to run deeper into the forest, continuing my fight against the chill. That point of light couldn’t have looked any further away…

To keep the winds from abusing the poor thing, I folded my wings in to shield the both of us. That was about the most movement I could make of them.

“Hang in there!” I shouted.

I made it to the light and found a house. It wasn’t cold inside, but it wasn’t warm either. It was temperate.

With what little resources I had available here, I had to gradually raise the girl’s body temperature. If I did it wrong, she’d go into shock.

I placed her in a bed, changing her out of her wet clothing and into some dry stuff I found in a closet.

There was a blanket just above a heater in the corner of the room, it had been slightly warmed up by its proximity to the heat source. I wrapped the girl in that.

It seemed like things were stabilizing a little, but it was still a gamble…

“You’ll be okay…Please, God, let her be okay…”

I put my head on the edge of the bed, keeping my eyes closed as I prayed.

There was movement on the bed...the girl was starting to shiver!

“Okay…that’s good!”

That shivering was a good sign. It meant her body was able to mechanically fight against the cold. She wasn’t dying anymore.

But she wasn’t out of this yet. I had to get her temperature climbing. Using my very limited emergency care knowledge, eventually, her body got just under the average for a human.

I was getting good readings from her now. From here, her body could take control and warm her up. I set a fire in the fireplace, and turned up the archaic coal heater on the other side of the room.

With all this heat, the girl finally recovered, but she needed to rest for a while. All I could do was monitor her condition.

~☆☆☆~

In all the excitement, I wanted to see what was going on outside. The snow had died down, but it didn’t look safe to travel yet. Not that I could, since watching over the little girl was a priority for the moment.

When I turned back, the girl was sitting up in the bed. She’d recovered at last.

Her little eyes were just staring at me. Her blank stare was actually super adorable, like she was some sort of doll, silently watching me from the corner.

She looked Kanai. Her narrow eyes and straight black hair gave that away. Did I know the Kanai language?

Yeah, it was in my vocabulator. I switched my language over to that to see if maybe she could speak.

“What’s your name?”

“Hanako desu.” She replied.

“I’m Yalda.” I pointed to myself. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Kowai.”

She said she was scared. Was it of me, or of the situation? I found it weird that she just kept staring at me with a blank face. She wasn’t very expressive.

“Hanako, I’ll protect you. You’ll be okay.”

“Umm.” She nodded. That was her way of saying “Okay.”

It was so weird being the big girl. It’s not often I get to see how it felt to stand taller than everyone else, besides in video games. But that really doesn't count here.

Hanako jumped down to the floor, trotting her way over to me, then looking up with that blank, expressionless stare of hers.

I kneeled down to her, putting my hand over her forehead and brushing back her bangs to feel if she had a fever. She seemed alright.

“Do…do you know where my mother is?” She asked.

“No, I don’t. I’m Sorry. I wish I did.”

“Oh.” Her eyes turned sad, and she looked away. “I want my mother.”

Why was she out here all on her own anyways? It seemed very odd that a little kid like here would just happen to be in a nasty spot like this.

Definitely not a good idea to head outside, but I wanted to know what was going on. We might have been in her nightmare. This poor girl had it a lot rougher than me, since I was able to deal with harsh environments. She was just a normal human child.

I kept the girl company, thinking maybe her mother, or someone would come along. This place was lit up when we got here, so somebody would have to show up eventually.

But nobody came. It was looking like a pretty long pipe dream that we’d find someone out here.

Wait, don’t tell me the person who lived here was in danger now too…maybe I should go out and look for them.

I took a peek out the window again, but the weather still looked bad. My map wasn’t working either, so it would be very easy to get lost.

And if I left here, would Hanako come with?

“Hmmm…”

I couldn’t risk going out there, putting both of us in potential danger. It was best to just stay here and wait for the storm to clear up.