Chapter 3 - The Trapper’s Cabin
Dawn broke not with sunlight, but with a dull, gray lightening of the storm.
The blizzard had reduced to a heavy snowfall.
I was alive.
My fingers burned with the agonizing pain of returning circulation, meaning frostbite hadn't fully claimed them.
Titan nudged my cheek, licking the frost from my eyelashes.
We emerged from the root cave.
The Alaskan wilderness was silent, beautiful, and deadly.
Titan took the lead again, sniffing the air.
Half a mile through the deep drifts, the outline of a structure appeared.
It wasn't a hallucination.
It was an old, weathered trapper’s cabin, half-buried in the snow.
The door was unlocked, hanging on rusted hinges.
Inside, it smelled of dust, old wood, and mice, but it was dry.
More importantly, there was a cast-iron woodstove, a stack of split logs, and a shelf with a few emergency supplies: dusty cans of beans, matches, and a heavy wool blanket.
It took me thirty agonizing minutes to strike a match with my clumsy, swollen fingers, but soon, a small fire crackled in the stove.
As the cabin warmed, I collapsed onto the dusty floorboards, Titan resting his heavy head on my chest.
I wasn't going to die today.
May you like
I was going to survive.
And then, I was going to destroy them.
