Little blue boy
come, reach for the light
Gates open wide before you
blue boy, please don't cry
Fly high, baby
come, reach for the sky
Soon you'll meet your mom, blue boy
have sweet dreams, good night
***
'What.. was I…'
When Alwyn opened his eyes, no sound other than his heartbeat could be heard from inside the coffin-like shelter. The night was over. He had survived.
Warm tears formed in his crystal-blue eyes, but after just a blink they were already gone, as if they had never existed.
"Thank you."
Without Lynn's memories and general knowledge, Alwyn would have definitely died in that deadly trap.
He would not waste the golden opportunity that Lynn had given him.
"Better get up."
There were still many things he had to do, and lying in a coffin was not one of them.
Bang.
The planks jumped in the air, and a figure raised himself from the dust. Alwyn sat on the edge of the pit, his head still dizzy from the blood loss, and quickly looked around him.
The plain was deserted, no enemy in sight, no nothing.
The broken carriage had vanished, and now only the ground, painted with dark red stains, remembered the horrors of the day before.
Even the low wall of dirt had started to fall apart under the fury of the wind. A single night was enough to make an entire pile of rubble completely disappear, so it was not that strange.
After taking a look, he wondered where the Reapers were now. Probably not too far from him, considering that only half a day of travel separated them. They too had to set up camp for the night, and they would only depart once the sun was up in the sky.
Were they happy with their actions?
Was it worth it to kill innocents?
No one could answer those questions but them.
Alwyn stared in the distance, hoping to see the familiar silhouette of the carriage or hear human voices.
It was all futile.
The plain was deathly silent, but that didn't stop a gentle breeze from caressing his neglected face. It was still very cold and his clothes had not dried overnight, obviously. That was one of the four major problems he had to solve. If he didn't, he would not last long.
"Achoo!"
A little cloud of steam formed in front of his mouth. Inside the shelter, the temperature had reached a tolerable temperature, and now that comfort was suddenly gone.
"I better not catch a cold…"
He said while shaking like a leaf.
When his body adjusted to the temperature, he immediately got to work.
He changed the bandages and tended to his wounds, both on arms and legs, with the clean rags he had used to isolate the walls of the shelter.
The moment he saw their conditions, he took a sigh of relief.
During the night his legs had healed to a certain degree, but it was better if he didn't use them yet, as ankles and feet were missing. Still, that was a considerable improvement compared to the state they were initially in and the unexpected slowing down of the regeneration.
The peculiar thing though, was that even the deep scratches on his arms were closing.
He was in the dark regarding the principles behind that magic, but one of the factors that favoured it could have probably been the good sleep he had. Unfortunately he couldn't remember what he had dreamed of, but he felt like it was something important.
Had it been influenced by Lynn's memories? It was a possibility.
Still, although his sleep had been peaceful and relaxing, he now felt like every fiber in his muscles had been torn.
With that horrible sensation, the first thing he did was dig some dirt. Was he really that masochist? No, he had a good reason for doing that. This time he obviously took it slower, as there was no time limit, and did it while sitting on the ground so as to not worsen the legs' conditions, but every movement still put his body through a terrible strain.
He then took the bag of lizard feed, and put all the dirt it could fit inside of it.
Had he gone mad? No, quite the opposite.
Why was the earth so hard in the vicinity of the Greyshard Range? That question had a simple answer.
Ice.
In the evening the temperature fell and the soil, which during the day had absorbed the humidity in the air, froze.
People usually took some emergency tools with them when traversing such territories, so that they could melt it into a bowl. But Alwyn didn't have the luxury of such tools, he didn't even have matches.
He had to improvise, and the lizard feed was his best option.
In western settlements, farmers would occasionally use it to make it easier for the ice on the streets to melt. Alwyn had never been good at chemistry, so he didn't know the possible reason for the phenomenon, but it worked, and in the end that was all that really mattered.
So he used the planks to keep the bag suspended some inches from the ground, and positioned the shovel's concave blade under it.
The only thing left was to wait for the dirty water to drip down, but the process would only begin when the sun was at its highest.
His first major problem had been solved, although it was just a temporary solution.
The second one, the legs, was not that far as well.
The third one though, the clothes, was something out of his reach, currently.
And the fourth one, the food, could only be resolved once he entered the Whispering Woods. It was a dangerous place, but it was his only ticket to Westguard. He could not make the journey without supplies.
If he was lucky, he could even stumble upon an abandoned village. Taking the risk was well worth it.
He returned to the shovel and made sure the structure above it was stable.
'Good.'
There was nothing to do anymore, so he went back inside the shelter, which now had no ceiling, to rest some more. He would need lots of energy on the journey to the forest.