Who you once Were || Volume One|| RuthTheNerd

Prologue

Swirling white madness.

That was the only thing to describe the bitter cold of the unrecognizable place. White, white white, and not a speck of darkness was there to envelop the small girl who was trudging through the thick snow.

Her face was not visible, her hair blocking it and the wind whipping strands of the black locks onto the girl's cheeks. Her back was bent like the elderly's and was just as white as her face, flecks of snow falling off as she struggled to walk.

There was nothing in sight for miles and miles around. Not a sound, or even a beacon of light for encouragement. Nothing was all that was there, yet she kept persistent, her hands crossed over the other and flat on her chest, soaking in the little heat the clothes she was wearing brought her.

She kept at this for a long while, trailing a jagged line through the white blanket, staying in the same bent pose, her eyes on the ground and her face away from you. Her legs give away, and she collapses into the snow.

It was then that the girl turned to you, in her pain. She was smiling, deliriously smiling for no apparent reason. 

She looks like you. Long, silky black hair that would have looked lovely in the sun, the sun now blocked out by the clouds and the thundering roar of rainfall. Her face is pale and her cheeks might have been rosy at some point. Her eyelids are caked with snow, but it is her eyes that truly startle you-plump, yellow irises, gleaming like gold. Making their own light.

The girl takes slow, rattling breathes, trying to keep her breathing under control. She weakens the wider she smiles. 

Her mouth opens, but nothing comes out. Hundreds of snowflakes crowd onto her tongue, and she tastes them with disgust. Again, she opens her mouth, trying so hard to say something, anything, but her throat seems to be iced over.

She lifts a finger, chest-bumping up and down. You find it harder to see, and you strain to hear the girl's hard-earned words.

Shaking, she says, "Please come home."

And you wake up.