TDR: Life as a Traveller

Death, Chapter 1

Author note: As a result of rewriting this chapter, it has become extraordinarily long. However, for continuity reasons, I have decided to keep it all in "Chapter 1", and then split it up into parts, of which there are 4.

Part 1 — Struggle
"Ugh..."

I woke up with my face laying bare against the cold ground. My muscles ached with every movement. I slowly pulled myself off the ground. To my surprise, the book was still in my hand. I glanced around at my surrounding. I breathed a sigh of relief, 'It was all a dream, all of it,' I thought.
I was still in the familiar backyard forest I grew up in.
I put the book down for a moment and brushed off the dirt that was on my clothing.
It's getting dark, my mom and sister must be wondering where I went...

I grabbed the now plain book and started to walk back home. Just as I left the clearing, the forest I was familiar with grew eerier—the trees, more alien, the grass, darker, the light, dimmer.
I looked behind me and the clearing was gone, replaced by an unfamiliar, eerie, cold forest. My heart began to race as uncomfortable thoughts bubbled to the surface, It can't be, I thought.
I run, panicked, thinking I just took the wrong turn, but the forest seemed as if it had no end. I was nearly out of breath when I saw the end of the tree line, and just before I reached the end, I knew then... I was no longer in my backyard forest.

My heart sank as I came to the realisation, it...—it wasn't just a dream?

Before me, a collapsed trunk of a tree as wide as several city skyscrapers clumped together, nestled in an enormous quarry-like depression. Something orders of magnitude larger than any quarry I had seen in my life, you could easily fit an entire city inside. Further out, stretched mountains across the horizon. The mountains had already almost completely been sunk into darkness, with only the very top being sunlit. I, myself, stood on the lip of the quarry-like depression.

My backyard? Absurd! I had doubts I was even in the same universe anymore. I wanted to just take a knee and scream. I wanted to believe it was a dream. I wanted to ignore the reality I was faced with, that I saw with my very own eyes. My family, my friends and my whole life was now gone—unreachable. I was angrier than I was sad—angry at myself.

If I had just taken it more seriously, this wouldn't have happened...

The last of my tears on my face grew cold as the temperature rapidly dropped. The warm jacket I wore felt as warm as if  I stepped into a freezer with a tank top. The addition of the frigid winds told me I needed shelter quickly if I wasn't looking to freeze to death. I had resolved myself, I was to going to take it lightly anymore.

Thus, I didn't go on impulse. I needed shelter—yes—but I needed to first remind myself what I had to work with. My thermal jacket was the only warm piece of clothing I had on. As it had become clear it wasn't enough, keeping warm was going to be an issue. I also had a watch on my wrist, a Swiss Army pocket knife, that book, and a lighter in my pocket. It wasn't much, but it was just enough to start a fire. With that covered, the next step was to survey. I had a suspicion that the quarry-like cavity would have a stabler temperature, perhaps it was even warmer. I wanted to confirm it, and if confirmed, find a way down.
I felt the air already was well below freezing; the forest had already started to frost up with the sun completely gone over the horizon. Even walking over to the ledge, I felt cold stiff. Upon gazing below, I couldn't tell by looking if the temperature was more pleasant or not. I did manage to see a way down, despite it getting dark.
I had two options with what I knew: I could try to make a shelter of some kind with the readily available conifer-like trees, or I could attempt the descent.
If I went down, I wasn't going to get back up; however, by how the landscape looked, finding a place to take shelter would be easier, in fact, I saw a spot that could work.