Stacking stones

by Brimstone

*Clang*

You wake up with your shirt frozen to the slab. You peel yourself off, thankfully without leaving your shirt behind. Shivering, you sit up and warp your arms around yourself as you try to warm up. The entire cave is coated in frost, and the pool is frozen solid. You look outside, where the sun is shining and the birds are singing. It's warm out. You look back inside where the frost is slowly receding. The ever more frequent sense of confusion presses down on your mind. You look around, trying to pick out anything odd. You tap your hand against a rock a you try to think. The result is a loud clang. What the hell was that?

It's that cuff from yesterday. Surprisingly, you had almost forgotten about it. Now that you think about it, you realize it's not cold. The cave was freezing, so it should be as well. You're still cold, and you're not even made of metal. Against all logic, the cuff is still warm. You wish you were. If only you had a blanket. Or central heating, where the warm air comes up out of the vents. You can almost feel- Wait. You can feel it. You're no longer freezing, you're comfortably toasty. You scrutinize the cuff. Nothing's glowing or moving, but something is definitely going on.

You walk over to the slowly thawing pool of water. You pick a chunk of ice out and place it on the floor of the cave. You look at the cuff and back at the ice. You concentrate, imagining the ice being wrapped in hot air. Nothing happens for a few moments, but then the ice starts melting rapidly. Your concentration breaks, and you can feel warm air waft past you as it disperses. You stare at the cuff. The runes on it are wrapped around in an overlapping pattern, weaved to and fro. You still have no idea what they mean, but apparently they somehow change the temperature around you.

Sighing, you walk out of the cave. Magic bracelet or nor, you're still going up that mountain. Besides, you're hungry enough to eat a horse. The raspberry bushes are your first stop, and you have an idea. You pull your shirt off again, and break a branch off of a nearby tree. After breaking all of the twigs off, you fill your shirt with raspberries and tie it to one end of the branch. Hobo bag complete. Idly, you wonder if there's an actual word for that. Unknown words aside, you now have an easier way to carry these berries around now. You grab a handful from the bush and eat them, wishing you had something more filling. You stretch and look out at the mountain. It doesn't look to be farther than maybe four miles away.

You slide down the slope back down into the woods. Taking a moment to orient yourself, you set off towards the mountain. The woods are pleasant, with the trees being neither sparse or overgrown. As you walk along, all sorts of birds sing overhead, peeking over the branches at you. Speaking of birds, you pick out one call that sounds familiar. It's almost like the clucking a chicken, but not quite. You hear it occasionally as you walk along. Unexpectedly, you hear it right next to you as you reach a brook. A large bird with coppery feathers is strutting about nearby. It's a pheasant, you're sure of it. Your stomach rumbles. Pheasants are game birds. You haven't had anything to eat besides berries in days.

Keeping your eyes on the pheasant, you slide your shirt off the pole you made, and grab a rock. Miraculously, your attempts at making one end pointy pan out, and are quiet enough not to spook the pheasant. You creep forwards, until you are mere feet away from the unknowing pheasant. You ready your pointy stick. Reaching down, you grab for a handhold to steady yourself. A loud clang echoes through the woods. The pheasant bolts. You bury your face in your hands and shout in frustration. Grabbing a rock, you toss it into the brook. Unexpectedly, you spot silvery shapes swimming away from it. Okay, you can salvage this. Fish instead of pheasant.

Five minutes of frustrated jabs at the water later, you have collected exactly zero fish. You're not cut out for hunting. However, an idea strikes you. You concentrate on the water around a decently sized fish, and visualize all of the heat being sucked out of it. In short order, you have a block of ice with a fish in it. Grabbing a rock, you break the fish out of the block. There's no shortage of dry twigs, and there's a patch of dead, dry grass not too far off from the brook. You make the beginnings of a fire before realizing you don't exactly know how to make a fire. Friction is key, but beyond that, you're unsure.

Again, your thoughts slide to the cuff. You don't know what side effects this thing may have, other than apparently turning you into a popsicle at night, but you aren't glowing from radiation or puking out your liver yet, so you figure you should be fine. The sun is creeping towards the horizon, so you focus on heating just one miniscule piece of the grass until it burns. It begins to smoke, and a single ember appears. You quickly bend down and feed the flames. They spread, and you add fuel to the fire. Soon enough you have a decent sized fire. Now, for the fish. You're not sure if you have ever cleaned and gutted fish before, but you're satisfied with your efforts. You eat nearly the entire fish, and a handful of berries.

The sun is starting to go down, and you're almost to the foot of the mountain. By the time you reach the treeline, the moon has slipped into the sky. You groan as you realize you're going to have to sleep up a tree again. Scrambling up one tree, you're able to climb onto another which is more suited to sleep in. You hang the pole and bag in the branches, and wait for sleep to take you.

Comments

[Brimstone]

1476630
I dropped hints before that, but yes, now you know.
Also, ding! New chapter.

[EXbronymaster]

What are you?
a Story Machine?

can't wait for MOAR

[lines n stuff]

goddamn you're hammering these out like t.vs during the 1950's

[Gamerteen13]

You don't know what side effects this thing may have, other than apparently turning you into a popsicle at night, but you aren't glowing from radiation or puking out your liver yet,

...I'm sorry, I think I missed this last time around, but is that a reference to "Wayward Courier" and/or "Bear, Scribe and Paladin"?