The first thing Scar felt was the cold. Icy eyelashes stuck together, preventing from opening his eyes and looking around. The pale skin of his face was unpleasantly tightened by thin ice. He seemed to be lying on something.
There was no sudden and expected rush to action. Why? He probably didn't care. After all, really, why should he get up? Is he in a hurry somewhere? Is someone waiting for him? It's not bad here either. It's just cool.
He thought about nothing absolutely. Apparently, mainly because Scar couldn't remember a single worthwhile subject to think about. He couldn't remember anything at all except his name. Not to say that it bothered him or worried in any way, because there is nothing to worry about if there is a blank sheet in your head.
Scar listened. The wind was roaring somewhere in the distance. For a second, it seemed that he heard the ringing of bells out of the corner of his ear, but this feeling quickly disappeared, replaced by silence and the old calmness, like a blanket separating him from the outside world.
After lying still for a few more minutes, or maybe hours, he wanted to explore. Of course, doing nothing is nice, but sometimes you want variety. Scar opened his eyelashes with a little effort, seeming to catch the quiet crackle of ice, and stared at the light blue sky. The gray tops of the fir trees, abundantly covered with untouched snow, stuck out at the edges. It was as if he was looking at an incredibly detailed photo, admiring the chosen angle. Scar was surrounded by silence. Even the wind humming somewhere didn't revive the coniferous paws, pressed against each other by snowdrifts.
Blinking in confusion, he experimentally clenched his hand into a fist. The action gave off a dull, but bearable pain. The frozen mitten crunched with stuck snow. He raised his hands in front of him, spreading fingers. A handful of ice floes fell on his face. Grimacing and brushing them off with the sleeve of his jacket, Scar leaned on his elbows and sat down.
It turns out that he was lying in the forest. You could have guessed earlier, given the trees and the lack of sounds, but what's the difference in general? Looking around with mild curiosity, he began to shake himself off in disappointment, finding nothing around him except fir trees, snow and dry sticks sticking out of it, which had once been bushes.
As he got to his feet, Scar felt a strange vibration. It quickly began to turn into a distant rumble that was moving inexorably towards him. With the approach of the sound came a strange feeling of wrongness and danger, but he was interested, and Scar had no reason to listen to the inner voice. He didn't know how loud the humming was, but it got close enough to be compared to the distorted crackle and gurgle of something thick. The sound with a stretch seemed real or natural.
A figure appeared between the wide silhouettes of the fir trees. Very thin and completely black. It seemed that its color absorbed the rays of the sun, leaving no glare and spreading darkness. It was striding rapidly towards him, limping on its right leg, with a charred stick sticking out of ankle. Burnt fragments of branches of various lengths and thicknesses also peeked out from the back and head. The hum was coming from it.
Scar froze in motion, not taking his eyes off the creature. A human being? It doesn't matter. It's probably worth leaving. It's limping, so it can't run fast, right? For some reason, the boots were frozen to the snow. It got hot. A cloud of steam escaped from his mouth.
The figure did not stop, starting to smoke strangely. Ears ached from the unpleasant sound. Scar wished with all his heart that he could go back to the snow and close his eyes. Perhaps he could have done at least the second.
Closing his eyes, Scar let fate float freely, hoping with some part of himself that he wouldn't die right now. He's done so little research yet. It's unfair.
In the second when the creature managed to get so close that, apart from the distorted hum, Scar couldn't hear his own thoughts, the sound was interrupted by the melodious chime of bells, disappearing without a trace, like a painful hallucination.
The last thing Scar felt was the soft, almost weightless touch of someone's cold hand, before the world fell back into saving darkness.