Past the Mountains, Among the Clouds

Confusion. Panic. Death. A frostbite. My body. It got me. It got me whole. I was dead.

I snapped back into consciousness. It felt as if I was born again. My rebirth. The very first thing to be greeted by my eyes, an old roof. I looked around. It seemed to be a dilapidated hall. Darkness covered what seemed to the entryway to this chamber of sort. It was dark. Very dark. Yet, aside from the entryway, I could see just fine. No. It was more than just fine. I touched my nose to find my glasses. Yes, I wear glasses. In their absence, I'm no better than a blind man. I couldn't even identify someone sitting near me without them, if we were to rely completely on visual cues. Of course. There are other things. Sound. Scent. You could more or less identify your closed ones with these two alone.

The point was, my glasses were not there. Yet, I could see everything as clear as day, aside from the entryways, of course. I was starting to doubt if there even was an entry gate to being with. 

Confusion. Panic. Death. I remembered. Her. The frostbite. Her eyes. The icy gaze of theirs. I had passed out. No. I had died. I was sure of it. The numbing sensation in my chest. My heart succumbing to the bite. My vocal chords breaking into chilly shards of flesh. The after taste of blood in my mouth. I remembered them all. I indeed must have died.

Was this the afterlife? Am I perhaps in hell? 

Hell.

Purgatory.

Death.

I had died. I was in my purgatory. My purgatory to torture me for my sins. My life must've not been redeemable if that is the final predicament I was sentenced to. I sat on the floor of the dilapidated, worn-down hall, contemplating what my sins had in for me. Damn. I thought I was a nice person, but here I was waiting. I waited. Waited for more. More. More. None. Nothing happened. Nobody had come. An hour seemed to have passed by. Not that I had some divine sense of temporal prediction. I just thought that quite a while had passed since I came to. 

Is this really the afterlife? I doubted. While the divine must have conjured this place to torture me for my sins. It didn't quite appear like it. It seemed more like a classroom hall than anything. I didn't fear school in particular. Sure, there were some bits here and there, but I didn't find it traumatic in any sense. I stood up. Bored with what seemed to be an uneventful hour, it was time to look around. Interestingly, the more I looked around the hall, the stronger my doubts grew about this being the afterlife. The chairs were dusty. No one must've used these in a while, I thought. There was one large board; a chalk board at the far end of the hall. Broken too. Yes. It was a lecture hall. 

Why? What was the reason for me to be here? More aptly, how did I even end up here? The questions tossed around my mind. My eyes landed on the entryway. It was still pitch black, sticking out like a thumb. With no more place to explore, my next venue for investigation would be the entryway, I decided. I reached the end of the hall. Opposite of where the chalkboard was. There was a door. A regular one. Coincidentally, was painted black with a matte finish, that's why it appeared to be pitch black to my able-to-see-in-the-dark-eyes. What an odd choice of colour for a door. Aren't they painted brown or something? A pretty sensible color for wooden ones, I believed. However, the moment my fingers touched the surface of the door, I felt embarrassed. I realised my mistake. It wasn't a wooden door to begin with. It was cold to the touch. A bit too cold, in fact. Sonorous. It was metallic. Perhaps that's why the odd choice. Still, no matter how great of a discovery of mine it was, it didn't quite explain how I ended up in this place.

Pull. I pulled the handle on it. It wouldn't budge.

Was it stuck?

I tried pulling harder. No result.

Harder. No result.

HARDER.

The handled slipped and I landed running back into a stack of chairs. The chairs fell. Dust replaced the atoms of oxygen in the air and I spent ten minutes sneezing all because of it. My head. It hurt. I must've hit it on my crash to the chairs. As I reached my hand to check it out, I felt a cold sensation on the back of my head. No. It my hand. It felt cold. So did my head. I looked up at my hand. It held an object of a sort. It was like a toroid, a half toroid with a curve making it look like some sort of "C". I looked closer. It seemed to have a similar matte finish like the door. The only difference being it was silver. Then it stuck me. It wasn't a weird "C". It was the handle. Torn. My hands hadn't slipped off the handle, rather they tore it away.

Yes. I turned my gaze back to the door. There it stood like an immovable object, with its handle missing. As if someone had torn it off the metallic structure with just sheer strength. The place appeared to be in a ruined state. If I didn't find a way out, who knew when it might come crashing down on me, burying me?

I once again made my way back to the door. This time more determined than ever to open it. I placed my fingers on what remained of the handle attached to the door and pulled with all my strength. I pulled. It wouldn't budge. I pulled harder. Hard- Oh, I could feel the faint movements of the structure. Using every ounce of force remaining in my body, I gave it one final pull.

"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" I cried out.

Just when I had triumphed, I was pulled back. In one swift motion, the door opened on the other side. So I was supposed to push on it. It was my final thought before the crash. I was sucked in. No. I was sucked out like a vacuum, coming to a stop by a crash once again. I was exhausted. I had no choice but to give in to the will of the door. It had overpowered me. I had lost to the inorganic metallic structure.

I was outside. Though not in a particularly good state. I had once again crashed. Unlike the chairs, this didn't hurt much. Yes. My landing seemed to have been cushioned.

Soft. A Pillow. Yes, I seemed to have crashed onto a pillow stack. It was soft, comforting and warm. Warm. Wait, it shouldn't be. Unused pillows are supposed to be cold. Were these used pillow stacks?

I looked down at my comforting abode. It wasn't something. Calling it 'something' had been disrespectable now that I think about it.

It wasn't a pillow stack.

It was a person.

My abode wasn't a used pillow but the bare laid abdomen of that person. Soft and comfortable. It felt squishy. On a closer look, it wasn't even a guy. It was a girl. To any passing bystander, it might have given them a very wrong idea about ourselves. One that would have ruined my public image for life. I tried to move away, but then. 

Her face. It seemed familiar. I seemed to have seen her somewhere. The eyes. Open. They were open. Piercing into me. Her gaze. It was cold. Very cold. She was her. 

The maiden in white.

The bride.

The deity.

An existence greater than humans.

"How long are you planning to sit on me?" She called to me.

Her voice.

It was chilly.

Literally. The wind out of esophagus. It was cold.

My ears hurt.

I gave no response.

She must've not liked my lack of response. In one swift motion, she kicked me to the side. My eyes couldn't follow. Before I knew it, I was on the ground, squirming on the dusty floor. She was standing above me. A figure of authority. A superior. Her gaze was serious. Her gaze was cold.

I was back in the hall. Though this time, I wasn't alone. She was present. She searched around, looking for something at the other end of the hall. I sat one of the less dusty desks, waiting. I didn't know what else I was supposed to do. So I just sat, waiting for her to finish her quest. She did. A switchboard.

One. Two. Three. Four.

The once dark hall was now filled with light. I could see clearly in the dark, but now, I could even notice the tiniest of details in my surrounding. Each speck of dust seemed to be discernable. The grains on the chalkboard trapping the chalk particles. I was met with so much stimulus all at once. It felt overwhelming.

"Honestly, I knew you were stupid. But to this extent? You must be a rare specimen." 

The icy demeanour. The cold eyes. Her stony gaze. Her bitter words. Such was her very first statement towards me. Not a question. A deduction. An existence greater than humans.The embodiment of cold.

She was Biera Ullr Archion, the Embodiment of Cold, the Queen of Frost, the Ruler of Winter Spirit, the Princess of Heavenly Peaks, the Mother of Mountains, the Nemesis of Warmth, the Goddess of Winter. Yes. An existence greater than us humans. She was cold, through and through.