Chapter 1: Deep freeze - log

What no one realizes about lighting a fire in subzero temperatures is that even branches can get frozen, and it's a bit like boiling water. It'll start, but the colder the water is, the harder it is to get hot. In this cold bitter wind, it was more like -30 degrees. The chances of starting an open fire were close to nill, Calix had just gone to create more stitching out of wood fibers to continue the process, Andromeda was on her way back to the river to collect fresh water that flowed underneath the layers of snow and ice we had dug out previously. Today was much colder than it was yesterday. Yesterday we could get a fire going, today we've only failed. Our hands started to feel the cold numbness that slowed down the joints and ligaments in the fingers as we tried again and again to settle in for food, the dry meat that we brought along figuring we'd only be out for a few days was already down to crumbs, and what we had left was a couple cans of fruit that were nothing but ice at this point. One would need to thaw them in order to eat any nutrients and stay remotely warm here. 

Drinking the fruit slop that came out of those cans was like consuming a chunky pear and aluminum-flavored tea, except you could taste the rust and the charcoal carcinogenic blackness through the cans, and the weirdness that fruit has when you freeze and unfreeze it multiple times. None of us knew whether it was safe to eat, but at this point, we were getting desperate. Desperate for warmth. Luther had been gone for what felt like ages, being a hunter and having some gear with us he thought that the best chance was to find a reindeer or moose to facilitate surviving just long enough out here. Sometimes when we were in between sleep and waking we thought we heard the distant cracks of gunshots, seeming to suggest that something was on its way, but he never showed up to get some help to haul the loot, and we had already said that we should keep the campsite as close to us as possible and that those who were out foraging or searching would be able to find the site again based on the smoke from the fire. 

I'm starting to grow afraid.