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// 2: Hel 
// Story: Fimbulvetr 
// by Alkarasu 
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The first night was the hardest. It came sooner than he thought and was colder than he expected. With no means to make a fire, his only defense from the cold, besides his own fur and feathers, was to dig a hole in the snow under a small fir tree and plug the entrance with the same snow. He hardly slept, despite being exhausted from all the walking in the deep snow, and with the first light of the morning, he was on the road again.

The forest around him got thicker after a little while, leafless bushes making the hard track even harder. Fir trees gave way to birches and pines, then something he couldn't identify without the leaves. No trace of humans and no trace of any wildlife met him on the second day of his lonely walk. He ate some of the buns and an apple, trying to ration his meager supplies. He knew he'll have to eat the chicken too, but also knew it'll take a lot of time to work up that kind of hunger. 

That was also the day he first met the strange hills. It wasn't too easy to notice them. They were not that tall or particularly large, and his ability to notice things was severely limited by the exhausting monotony of pulling through the snow but the oddity was still too big to miss after bumping into several of them. The hills were devoid of any big trees, had distinct long and narrow shape, and were in many cases aligned. It was almost like someone took the time to build them. Vsevolod heard about such things before. Many ancient cultures did something like that to bury their important people, but the number of the strange hills was enough to bury a nation whole. Either it was some kind of ancient necropolis that held ages of dead kings, or there was something else to the hills. Winter kept its secrets, though, the snow was thick enough and he was tired enough to drop this mystery for another time. Still, the hills took his attention long enough. When he stopped pondering what could produce such hills, it was already too late to run.

The bear wasn't particularly large, and wasn't looking too aggressive, but Vsevolod knew that trusting a bear that isn't asleep in winter is suicide. No matter what rose the beast from its den, the unhappiness of the event should've made its already highly unsociable nature even more so - and hunger, that was inevitable in this frozen hell, wasn't doing anything to improve the bear's mood.  So, having no other real choice, the ex-human used the only thing he had as a weapon - he threw the grocery bag right into the bear's face. The bag ripped apart, spreading his measly supplies around, and that had proven to be enough to distract the bear. It was probably already very hungry, and the apples took its interest immediately. Not bothering to check for gratitude, Vsevolod turned tail and scrambled away as fast as he could. Only when the sun had started to set, was he able to calm down and stop. 

If the exhaustion of the previous day was bad, this time, it somehow got even worse. His limbs were refusing to move, even his wings were tired, yet he knew that he'll need some kind of a shelter. The sky above the trees was darkening faster than it could be because of the coming evening, and in winter, it meant that the night could bring the wind, snow or more cold. Looking around, he spotted several fir trees nearby, with lower branches touching the snow and the upper ones covered in even more of it. It wasn't perfect, but he had heard the stories about people braving the winter night like that. Of course, they weren't entirely happy about it, and got clothing, but he got his fur and feathers. Not an ideal defense, but it was obvious that without those he would've frozen yesterday. Even with those, the cold was slowly creeping up on him, so he used the little strength he had left to gather even more snow on the lower branches and then crawled inside. It was cold, but he wanted to believe that it was warmer than on the outside. This night he slept, though the sleep was fitful and in the morning he wasn't feeling rested.  

He could still walk, so that he did. The walking made the cold go away for a time, and his gait was better than yesterday, but the hunger, not sated the day before, became even more apparent. He thought about everything he knew about finding food in the winter. His current form screamed "carnivore", with its sharp beak and talons, but his halves told him different stories about how to approach the hunting. The front one, being of some kind of an eagle, implied soaring through the skies, finding the prey from above and attacking it from an unexpected angle. The back half was of an ambush predator, crawling in the bushes and jumping from the branches. First was impossible since he was barely able to move his wings - let alone fly with them, the second - because the forest was too scarce and completely transparent. Even with his bleak coloration, he stood out in the snow and was very visible from very far away. Sometimes, he saw the hares that started to run away from him before he even noticed them. 

The forest around wasn't as dead as it seemed to Vsevolod on the previous days. With his new eyesight, he started to notice the traces of various wildlife around him. There were tracks in the snow, from hares and foxes, there were birds in the treetops, once or twice he even stumbled upon an entrance to a lair of some kind - probably, fox or badger. The only thing same about it was that everything alive, except for that bear, had given him a wide berth, not willing to be helpful about his food difficulties. In his perpetual tired state, it took him a while to understand the meaning of that.

The wildlife knew, that it should be wary of a griffin.

There was some hope in that, he realized. If the animals knew his form, there should be the ones to not only create that fear but to maintain it through short animal generations. And those should be frequent enough guests in the area. He sincerely hoped that they are not as territorial as cats or eagles. He didn't hold much hope in them being sapient. After all, if he wasn't dead yet even with his non-existent survival skills, this form was good enough to survive the winter, and that meant that it doesn't need much intelligence to do that.  Especially with his both halves belonging to well-known solitary animals, and solitude being a bad soil for sapience.

In any case, while meeting another griffin was a possibility, and not immediately a bad one, he didn't hold much hope for it. Meeting a herd of deer, though, was more of a possibility for food. He could track them by their deeper tracks and strike in the night, when they would be more vulnerable. Or there could be an old and weak animal in the herd he could outrun and overpower. He hadn't seen the traces of the deer presence yet, but there could be some later. So he walked, and walked, walked until the sun had set once more. This time, he was ready and have selected the proper spruce in advance. It wasn't easy to fall asleep with his diet for the day being only the snow, but he managed to curl up enough to retain some degree of warmth. His sleep was deep and in his dreams there was cold and hunger.

The morning was as cold as his dreams, and the hunger even more. His lonely trek had brought him to the area nearly completely covered by the strange hills. There was less wildlife around, but it was less scared of him for some reason. The pines and firs of the previous day gave way to several massive rowan groves - with a lot of berries still hanging from the low branches. Vsevolod's heart and stomach rejoiced with the sight of the food - he knew, that rowan isn't the tastiest of berries, but in his position, it was a gift he wasn't about to throw away. So he threw them up. Something in his digestive system had a grudge against rowan berries, and it took him a lot of time to recover from the vile aftertaste that was left in his mouth. That night he dreamed about being half-waxwing instead of half-eagle. For those, the groves were an open buffet. 

In the morning, when he dug himself out from his temporary lair and was about to continue his struggle with the snow, he saw a griffin.  The evening caught him on an edge of the forest, before the large clearing, and high above it, in the rays of morning sun, lazily spreading its wide wings, soared probably the most majestic creature he ever saw. Vsevolod's eagle eyes easily bridged the distance, letting him see the snow-white feathers with tiny dark specks, that adorned the front half of the creature, light brown fur of its rear, and impossible purple splotches around the golden eyes. In a short moment he was caught in the beauty of the sight before him, the griffin above angled its wings and darted south at the speed one won't expect from the living being. The only reminder of its presence was the ring of a distinct eagle cry that ringed in the woods long after the creature left.
His world was cold and hunger, but now it had an angel of hope in it. So, from that moment, his world also had a purpose.