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Alaska. The site of the current Holy Grail War, a ritual comprising of seven Masters and seven summoned Servants, seven pairs fighting for the omnipotent wish granter. Copied off the ritual based in Fuyuki, t...
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Alena groaned as she woke up, hand feeling the rough stone beneath her. She sat up, running her hand through her messy red hair. She sighed as she felt for the skins she had placed there, only to find them scattered around her.
"Must be the dreams," she rubbed her eyes. "Tossing and turning like that all the time is not good. I need the warmth." She pulled off the large bear skin and stretched as she stood, looking around her cave. The fire from last night lay in a ash-covered heap in the middle. She held out her index finger, shooting a spark and igniting it. There was just enough fresh wood or ferns to keep the flames going for a while longer as she went over to a cleft in the rock wall. She parted the ferns and pulled out a bowl of berries she'd picked yesterday.
She cooked her breakfast over the fire, hands outstretched in the flames, undaunted by the heat. She popped a berry into her mouth and scrunched her face. These weren't her favorite, but they would do.
As she ate, she thought about her unusual dreams. Dreams of fierce snowstorms, blood-covered snow, and darkness. She started as a raven cried from somewhere out in the forest. A bad omen.
She immediately chastised herself for thinking that. "There's no such thing." Then again, her aptitude for fire was strange enough. Perhaps... "No, stop thinking about it. They're just bad dreams. Nothing else to them." However, even as she grabbed her bow and arrows, she couldn't help but try to remember the details from her dreams, but the harder she tried, the more they alluded her.
Alena stepped out of her mountainside cave as she pulled on her patched coat, looking out at the snowy treetops below. She breathed out slowly, watching her breath disappear. She nimbly ran down the path down into the forest, having done this a hundred times over. When immersed in the forest, she took a moment to breathe in the sweet smell of pine needles. Then she drew an arrows and set it against the bow, moving along a snow-covered trail.
...
She hunted till nightfall, setting up camp in a wide space between several trees. With her back resting against a trunk, she began cooking the rabbit she caught while having hung up the other meat nearby. She sighed, watching the flames she had created turn the meat darker. The flames flickered and waved, shapes forming and breaking apart in an instant. She watched them as in a trance, never blinking as the fire danced.
"Momma!" Alena cried out as the flames circled around her, roaring up the sides of the wooden walls. "Papa!" She screamed as the fires raged closer, crouching against the side of her bed. She cradled her head in her arms, sobbing as the screams in the distance seemed to multiply.
Alena jerked awake as the smoke hit her. She coughed, brushing away the smoke as she pulled the rabbit meat up. She groaned as she stared at the blackened meat. "Great. That's what I get for dozing." She ate, choosing not to reflect on the memory that had come with the fire.
"That's all I do these days," she thought, half-amused. "Push things away that I don't want to think about."
She ate the burnt meat without complaint, now that there was anyone to complain to aside from the snow. She jerked her meat towards the snow. "Want some?" Nothing. "'Course not. This is what I get for living out here alone. No one to talk to." She finished the last of the rabbit and buried the bones in a snowdrift. She then leaned back against the tree trunk, letting herself drift.
