It was early when the light was still behind the mountains when I woke. I crawled from underneath my sheep skins and washed myself with a bucket by the well before I put on my work clothes. It was pitch black outside, yet I have walked the path to the middle of the village so many times over the course of my life that by now I could walk it even if I would become blind. Back home I bellowed on the smoldering fire, heating the meal from last night. my aunt Hermine would wake up just as I carried the heavy bronze pot from the fire to the ground. She kindly greeted me, pouring me a warm cup of the soup as quick as she could even get out her bed. Aunt Hermine always was kind to me, ever since my mother died many years ago she moved in with me and my father to help with the daily tasks of the house, now being the only woman in the household. I don't know why she never got children of her own with her late husband. Maybe the ghasts cursed her in some way preventing that, as she lived for many decades with her husband before the winter storm took him to the ancestors. It probably won't be long until father passes as well, he has been here since the very creation of our people and although his body does not decay by just time alone, his mind did. Appearantly there is only so much a mind can hold until it starts wearing on the capibilities of the body as well, for father rarely leaves the home these days. His last hunt was years ago, his last battle even longer.

As I finished my soup and ate the breadbowl, I stood up and left the house with my new hoe towards the field: Down the road, past the ash, into the valley. As I came there, I looked upon the field I had yesterday cleared of unwanted plants and started ploughing the remaining amount of soil. The sun however would not shine upon the valley that day, for dark clouds covered the blue sky as the heavens cried down that day. I worked on. Not long after the day was past it's halfway point, I saw how form the forest downstream a cold wind arose that made me look up in confusion. It was freezing cold all of the sudden, here at the hight of summer. I saw how frost bit itself to the wooden shaft of my hoe as I gasped and stepped off the field. What supernatural force had sent this wind at us?! I stumbled over my own thoughts as the thought came up that the ground would soon freeze shut again, even before we could sow the crops of next year. I looked up as I noticed myself shaking on my feet, I saw the valley flowing into the next one in the distance, but not long before I heard the mountains growling a deep brass burl, that shook the trees where they stood. It was not me who was shaking, it was as if the entire valley was shaking. Is the world tearing itself apart?! Have we been bad to the spirits?! Are we all gonna die?! Why?! What did we do wrong?! As questions raced through my head, my feet followed. Up the hill, past the ash tree, through the braided fence that was shaking and creaking as much as the wooden shingles of our house. Animals bursted into panic as the village erupted in a cacophony of distrought sounds existance held in their breath.

For a time that felt like an eternity, I sat with my father and aunt under the cover of our shaking shingles. What we can't see, we can't fear or so we thought, yet when the world itself is shaking underneath your feet, fear seems to be the only stable thing that is left standing. Yet the world was not to break that day, whether it was by intent or by intervention of some divine source. When the shaking would finaly stop, the village sighed. It was not long before we would wander from our homes bewildered to check up upon the rest of the village. Our village elder, Silenos, never was the type for overthinking much of the situation, as we were barely at the village square when we heard him jubelantly screaming out prayers to the spirits for delivering us from "certain annihilation". I didn't know what to think. My thoughts were interrupted anyway as another scream sounded over Silenos'.

"Nysar is stuck! Someone help us!"

It was the voice of Cymodoce, daughter of Nysar the hunter.

I started running towards the sound, but what I found when I arrived was horrible. A shallow trough formed a path from the mountain towards the village, going right through the place where Nysar's house once stood. Now all that remained were splintered wooden beams and shingles, when down the hill I spotted the cause: a giant boulder the size of a small house laying just beside our own house. It had missed us by maybe a dozen yards, having crashed right through the bordering fence. The rubble before me was barely recognizable as parts of a house, with the carnage inside so horrible that rebuilding the place was completely out of the question. We found Nysar there, mangled and with the contents of his skull splattered across the floor, laying next to what used to be the bronze cooking pot, it being reduced to a double layered plate after the boulder steamrolled across it. The screams of Cymodoce when she found about her father's fate were so terrible, that I retreated myself back to the grove. Where I found a delighted Silenos praising the spirits, not yet informed about the death of his neighbour Nysar. I did not bother telling him, instead taking my rest in prayer while more and more of the village joined me in peaceful sorrow.