Greykin Mountain

| 2 | First Moon

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It wasn't cold anymore. Jackson couldn't feel the ice beneath him or the snow falling on his face. The only noise he could hear was the whistling wind and the crackling of a fire.

          And warmth. It was so...warm.

          He grunted as he tried moving, opening his eyes to a blurred mirage of dark colours. Pain lingered in the whole left side of his body and throbbed in his right leg. He tried moving his left arm, and although he could feel it, it didn't budge. With an uncomfortable grunt, he managed to lift his head—he saw that his arm was wrapped in a sling, and as he frantically looked around, he realized he was inside a room.

          His clearing vision revealed wooden cabin walls, trophies of animal heads and skins, and a black, red, and blue quilt wrapped around him. How did he get here?

          Jackson frowned, resting back on the furred pillow. His head hurt when he tried to remember; he recalled trekking through the snow from the airport and arriving at the small village. He'd gone to a bar...asked a man for directions...but that was where his memory fogged.

          He groaned again, dragging his hand over his face.

          A door squeaked, but he wasn't sure what direction it came from.

          "Ah, you're awake."

          Turning his head, Jackson set his sights on a beefy man with a beard that reached his stomach. He came into the room with an axe over his shoulder and a handful of dead hares.

          "Found you out on the ice last night. You were in bear territory, kid." The man placed his axe on a table and threw the hares into a bucket. "Looks like one of 'em got you good."

          Jackson struggled to sit up. "Bears?"

          "You know...big brown things that live out in the woods," he said, scratching his face. "I patched you up best I could. I'm heading down to the village at dawn tomorrow, so we can get you to the doctor—she'll fix you up properly."

          Struggling to accept he'd been had by a bear and forgotten about it, Jackson shook his head—but that made it feel like his brain was swishing around inside his skull. He grunted and grimaced, gripping the side of his face with his free hand. "I was...out in the woods?"

          "Yeah. You lost a lot of blood, so you're probably gonna feel a little disorientated for a while. I'm sure it'll all come back to you," he said, sitting at his table as he took one of the hares out of the bucket. "I'm gonna make some grub—you hungry?"

          "Not...really," he mumbled, looking around. Where were his things? "I had uh...some stuff with me."

          With the knife he was using to skin the hare, the man pointed over at a chair by the fire. "It's all there."

          Jackson looked over, setting his sights on his backpack and the puffy mess that was once his coat.

          "You remember what you were doing up in Greykin?"

          Greykin.... "Uh...yeah. I came here looking for some missing reporters. I work for a paper in Dawnward."

          He glanced back at Jackson. "A lot of people go missing out here. You probably woulda been another if I hadn't found you."

          Looking over at the fire, Jackson frowned and tried to remember what had happened. But he didn't recall anything past arriving at that village and talking to the bartender.