1 A Cold Awakening

*gasp*

With a sharp intake of air, Richard woke and sat upright. Cold! So bloody cold! Why was he so cold?

He looked around for his bedroom window, did someone leave it open?

Then he noticed... he wasn't in his room anymore. In fact, he wasn't even in a building. He was sitting in the snow. He was outside. In fact, there didn't even seem to be any buildings near him. What the hell was going on?

He let out a breath and noticed that it hung the frigged air- it was so cold he could see it drift away. First twenty centimeters, then a meter, finally three meters.

It would have gone farther if it wasn't for a gust of wind at that very moment. Snow lifted off the ground and swirled through the air around him. He shivered and pulled his coat tighter around himself. A coat? Why was he wearing a coat? He shook his head and tried to remember.

His last memory was of a warm bedroom with a roaring fireplace. He sat in an armchair with a book in his lap. A blanket was draped over his lap. His pipe was in his hand. Then there was a sound. A whistling sound that he couldn't quite identify. What was that sound?

He remembered it carried with it some sense of threat. It was important. His memory flashed to a newspaper from earlier that day. December 24, 1944 was the date printed at the top.

Bombs! The whistling! Nazi bombs! His home in Oldham, England! The Nazi army had dropped bombs on Christmas Eve!

He gasped and stood, looking around frantically for the wreckage of his home. With a wince he fell back down to his knees. He looked down. His legs were there, thank God, but blood flowed from a large gash in his right thigh.

With his medical knowledge, he knew he had lucked out. A few inches deeper and to the left and he would have bled out from his femoral artery. He shuddered and glanced behind him. The snow bank where he had been laying was stained a bright red. He needed to take it easy and find help.

Where could he find help though? He peered through the snow. There were trees all around, evergreens from the looks of them, and no buildings. Just how far had the blasted explosion thrown him?

He took a deep breath and calmed himself. Now wasn't the time to panic, but to prioritize and plan. He searched his coat for... coat? How the heck did he get a coat on? He just couldn't remember. Richard caught his breath again. Don't panic. Rational thinking, yes, that was the way to go.

He felt the pockets of his coat. He then realized that this coat appeared to be made of fur. That also was strange... he didn't have a fur coat. He shook his head to ward away the cold and confusion once more and plunged his hands into his coat's pockets. One was empty, though warm. In the other, yes, a scarf! That would work!

He pulled out the scarf and examined it. It was rather small, but maybe with a bit of effort he could apply it as a tourniquet. Richard attempted to wrap it around his leg. To his confusion, not only did it work, but he could wrap it around his thigh twice. 'I must be more confused than I thought...?'

He again resisted the distraction. He tied the knot tightly and tried to stand once more. This time, he was successful. The pain was intense, but he made it to his feet and seemed relatively stable.

Now standing, he peered through the snow and trees again. Which direction should he go? The howling of the wind was the only sound he could hear, so he needed to rely on his sense of sight instead.

He turned in a slow circle. There! A light! It was some distance off, but for just a moment he saw it through the trees and swirling powder. He estimated it was no further than half a kilometer. He gingerly took a step forward and was pleased to find his leg could hold weight, at least for the moment.

With a determined clench of his jaw, Richard stepped towards the light. Then he stepped again. Step after step, he limped his way towards the light- towards his salvation.

*****

A huge storm was blowing outside, but in the small cabin it was quite warm. Addy, the second oldest child at fourteen, was taking a fish stew off of the fireplace, "Dinner is ready! Don't forget to wash up in the basin before we eat!" She lectured the other two children in the room.

Declan, the oldest child at sixteen years old, rolled his eyes. "Addy, we know the rules, thanks. Mom and dad told you to watch out for us while they were travelling to town to pick up the packages. They didn't say that you were in charge!"

"Brother, when are mommy and daddy going to get back? I'm worried about them," the youngest child, Milly, asked. She was a sweet blond-haired child and only seven this year. She played on the floor on a rug that had been assembled from scraps of fabric gathered over the years by their parents. Declan sat on a nearby couch made of logs pegged together, straw bedding, and covered with furs. He was whittling a stick with a small knife. The shavings fell from the stick into a bucket near his feet.

Declan grinned at her innocent cuteness. "Don't worry. They'll be back after we're in bed. They needed to go pick up our Candle Day presents from town! Go wash up, and we'll eat."

"Ok." She turned and went to the wash basin to wet her hands. After she dried them on a nearby towel, she turned and came back to the table.

The lower floor of the cabin consisted of two rooms, their parent's bedroom and the main living area. In a loft over the back bedroom, the children's beds were huddled together in a row. Declan looked at Addy. By now, she had set the wooden dishes on the table and was using a wooden ladle to scoop the stew into each bowl.

A large loaf of bread sat in the middle of the table. Declan's stomach rumbled as he looked at the bread. He'd use a chunk of that loaf to wipe out his bowl at the end of the meal so as not to waste a drop of the stew. The only thing better than fresh bread was fresh bread with butter... he missed butter. They hadn't had a cow in over a year, and the churn sat largely unused in the corner of the room.

"Milly, aren't you hungry? Come and eat?" Declan turned to look at his sister. She was staring out the window with a strange expression on her face, "Milly? Milly, what's wrong?"

"Dec, why is there a man laying in the snow outside?"

Declan gasped and bolted to the window, sure enough, through the snow he could make out the figure of a human laying in the snow behind the cabin. He didn't appear to be moving!