That One Time I Died

What hits harder - an unwanted confession or an avalanche?

As the temperature in the great hall rises drastically, the realization finally hits me with full force. This is the end. I'm going to die. Surprisingly, what I feel is neither anger nor hatred but deep regret.

As I stand there, frozen in fear, my mind inadvertently goes back to the very beginning.
My parents' house seemed like the most magical place to me when I was a child, although one wouldn't have guessed that, judging by its exterior. The village where I used to live didn't look very impressive as a whole - it was full of one-storey houses painted in the exact same measly gray color. That is, except the one house in front of ours - it was an ashen black - the result of a fire that had occurred a few years before I had been born. The house's owners, like most of our fellow villagers, were not blessed with excessive wealth and never ended up repairing it.

In their old age, my great grandparents had moved from the capital of Hillwood, my home country, to a village nearing its eastern borders. The problems arose once they had fully settled in. The East tried to separate itself from the West, leading to escalating conflicts. During its time of separation, the East fell behind significantly. Even though in my parents' twenties, easterners had finally started reuniting with the rest of the nation, the situation remained rather hopeless and progress was slow. It did not help that the East had developed a rather hostile attitude towards anyone who had committed the crime of not being a local themselves.
My parents had me when they were in their thirties, so at least our fellow easterners had gotten back up on their feet. Still, my surroundings remained rather undesirable.

Surprisingly, I had never seen them as such until my early teens. Perhaps it was a lack of awareness, or maybe it was just the magic of early childhood. The memories still hold a magical quality to them, although, objectively speaking, they were nothing special. When I was a small kid, I was very sickly and had to be taken out of kindergarten. As my immune system did not get better when I was seven, my mother made the decision to tutor me at home. My family were more than qualified to do so - my father was a scientist before a lab accident badly injured his eyes and my mother was both well-versed in mathematics and languages, not to mention the arts. As for the other subjects, my grandma somehow always arranged private tutoring.

It was a very peaceful existence to be sure, but it was safe to say that my social skills were rather undeveloped. Growing up, I didn't have many friends and the few that I had often turned out to be unduly criticizing me behind closed doors. Oh, who am I kidding, they just hated me and talked shit about me every chance they got. I tried to ignore it at first and kept giving them chances until they had the audacity to cut me off. Eight-year-old me took that to heart, but I still had one loyal friend that helped me through all of it.

His name was Robin. Being a year older than me, he retained all the wisdom of the ancient ones, or that's what he used to say, right after he gave me the most idiotic advice. To be fair, he was quite smart for a nine-year-old boy. We were very good friends, or as he'd say "From womb to tomb". Not that surprising, now that I think about it. Our moms were best friends ever since highschool and practically raised us together. He was also homeschooled and was no more charismatic than me, so we often sat in silence with no idea what to say, but somehow that was never awkward.

However, the times we didn't sit in silence were never boring either. No matter how disadvantageous living in the middle of nowhere was, it still had its benefits. We'd often go around exploring the snowy woods.

On one such a day during March, we went on a particularly long walk. At the time, I was fourteen and he was fifteen.

Trying to hide my cowardice behind 'smartness', I piped up,

"Shouldn't we be worried about bears leaving hibernation?"

Robin laughed, as he fixed his red scarf in place. Even though it was March, my dear homeland is well-known for its freezing temperatures. The Northwest has it worse of course, but even bordering Lilium's scorching desert, our little eastern corner remained icy. According to my parents, that was one of the many signs that our god was still immeasurably powerful, even if he wasn't the most politically active.