Coldwelders Log: Wreckage


Coldwelder

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Coldwelder's Log: Wreckage

The engines droned powerfully through the headphones in the tiny cockpit of my little cargo airplane. It was no luxury model, and it was loud. But, on long flights, I had learned to enjoy the rumbling.

The day was brilliant, and I wore my darkest shades. I cruised casually along a stunning range of mountainous alpine wilderness, and it was truly pristine. I checked the northeastern horizon, to see a thickening fog growing over the stately peaks guarding my destination. It wasn't more than a few hours of airtime before I was scheduled to set down.

A thick, frozen wind howled across my body, biting at my ears, my lips, and my bare hands. My feet were numb and I stood in small, barren clearing, dwarfed by massive walls of stone. Wreckage sprawled across the acre, some of it still burned. Most of it was long frozen, and tipped in frost. “How long had I been unconscious?” There was no way of knowing how long I had been lying in the snow, but a pair of jeans and a fleece sweater don't count for much either way, and something told me to get moving. The snow thickened and blew sideways, the fog crept in and a strange blueish-green light reached deep in to the creaking woods.

The storm cell grew darker, and reached up into the atmosphere, looming over the winter landscape. A sense of desolation crept through the cabin of my airplane, undulating with the turbulent sky. The cell seemed to be moving north, falling away from my course, so I stayed true and remained focused. The mountains grew and the turbulence waned, and I could nearly see the land beyond the gray peaks, the late sun shining through parting clouds.

Just as I had released the tension in my shoulders, an abrupt silence washed across the vessel, and my stomach turned as I became weightless.

The blizzard was relentless, and it was no ordinary storm. It howled like a hundred starving wolves, and glimmered in ethereal shades, cut by beams of brilliant sapphire. I wandered like ship lost at sea, without direction or destination, but towards shelter from the tempest. As I trudged, not even a jackrabbit crossed my path, and I grew tired, and dazed from the crash. I began to freeze, and my legs were numb, my pace slowed to crawl. If I stopped moving I would freeze in minutes. And I wondered how long a man could last in a place like this.

The craft dropped like a stone. All the systems were down, and the panels were dark. All I could do was keep her steady, and steer away from the cliffs. White-knuckled, I gripped the yoke and maneuvered down towards the forest, my terror surfacing as the trees reached out, as if to snatch me from the sky. The first impact was titanic, tearing the starboard wing from the fuselage and reducing the treetop to splinters, burning fuel sprayed out across the foliage.

I was in shock, and everything seemed to slow, the forest rushing past me, with the air clear and my breaths deep. The other wing wrenched off, and I spun into a broadside collision with a megalithic tree trunk.

I stumbled, burying my frozen hands in the dry snow. I could barely lift my feet, and the snow was knee-deep. I nearly gave up, and collapsed into the bed of winter down. But I lifted my head, and peered through the icy wind onto a small cabin, dressed in snow and sporting a tattered flag.

Darkness fell so quickly, It nearly consumed the cabin before I had claimed it refuge.

-Coldwelder.

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