No Shelter But Me - Part One
We open on a frosty white forest, snowflakes slowly floating down through the sky. A soft silence as we see a crow perched on a branch high up in a tree. Whack. The bird erupts into a bloom of feathers as a stone falls from the sky and into the soft snow. “Fellenjuret*!” A young boy no older than six runs towards the fallen bird giggling at his achievement. Thinking only of how proud his parents will be when they see that he’s caught dinner. The snow reflecting the sun brightly onto his golden brown hair and his skin so pale he nearly blends into the snow. We pass over the snow covered ground and as we look up there stands a small but sturdy village. Log cabins where the townspeople live and torches on posts to light the way through the dark and snow. The villagers bustle about stocking up on food and wood for the continuously raging winter of Fjerda. We see the boy running between buildings and through peoples legs as he makes his way home. A small shack of wood insulated with grass and ice. He runs through the open door and loudly exclaims, “Look what I caught! Mom look, fetla*!”. He runs to his mother’s side as he proudly holds up the lifeless crow by its legs. A woman stands at a table preparing food for the next meal. She looks down at the boy and a mix of anger and fear clouds her face. The boys smile fades as his mother grabs the dead bird from his hands and throws it in the trash. “Sten*! I thought we told you there would be no more of that, go to your room until your father gets home.”, she yells at the boy before slamming the front door closed. He runs to the room he shares with his baby sister and hides behind her crib. He pulls his knees to his chest as tears run down his face. The kids in town always picked on him by saying that his eyes were gray because he cried so much that his eyes were filled with tears. The boys sadness is briefly broken as he hears his sister begin to stir. He sniffles and wipes his nose on his sleeve before standing up and beginning to talk to her. “Ajor* little one, sorry for waking you up. I was just sad, I did it again, even though father and mother told me it was wrong. I just wanted to get us some food.” We hear the front door open followed by the sound of heavy thuds made by thick boots. Then the sound of quiet bickering between a man and a woman, the boy was only able to pick out a few words “drüsje*… trassel*…drüskelle*…”, before “Micah, come out here.” The boy walks back out to the kitchen where both his father and mother now await him, he fails to hold in tears as he prepares to get yelled at again. Instead he is met with a heavy weight on his shoulder, he sniffles again before looking up to see his father standing in front of him. “We’re going to the woods boy.”, a slight pause then a nod and they are out of the door. His fathers hand still on his shoulder as they walk out into the Fjerdan wilderness. They had been camping out in the woods for two days, not a single word exchanged between them. They hunted together, ate together, and the man watched over they boy as he slept but they never spoke. Until just before the boy drifted off to sleep on that second night, he thought he heard a faint voice “Djel djeren je töp*.” then “Me jer jonink*” before the boy’s eyes become too heavy to keep open and his vision fades to black.