oi i had to write a short story intro for extension english.
i know noone will but im oosting here anyway so if anybody wants to gimemt heir thoughts, much obliged good sir/madam/hermaphrodite.
It was cold. So very, very cold. The biting wind rushed around him, howling like a wounded animal. It rushed at him, sweeping along the ice, hitting his face and forcing his clothes to press tight into his body. Beyond the seemingly endless sea of ice and snow surrounding him, vision was virtually nonexistent.
There was no feeling left in his hands or feet. The long matted hair and beard was rigid and full of ice, and he could feel icicles clinging to the underside of his nose. His lips were blue and his mouth was iced shut, but he had no need to speak. He was truly and utterly alone in this barren, desolate tundra. He traipsed on in silence, alone and lost, placing one foot in front of the other in what seemed like an endless cycle. He had no destination, but to stop moving was to submit to certain death. To keep moving was to postpone the inevitable.
He was tired now. The chill winds biting at his face stung and every breath of icy air he grudgingly inhaled burned his lungs. Every muscle in his body ached, or at least the ones he could still feel. He longed to be able to collapse in the snow, to lie there and await his fate. He wouldn't have to wait long either. About two minutes, the man estimated. It was very tempting. It was so cold.
The sea of ice and snow stretched out before the man in other circumstances would have been exceptionally beautiful. The pillars and spires of jagged ice, of all different sizes, protruding sharply from the surface, the delicate ice bridges connecting between the pillars, and the way the cold, weak suns rays glinted off the wet, glistening ice, reflecting blindingly back up into the eyes of the man, only increasing his discomfort.
The man trudged on. The scenery never changed, and to the man, the temperature only seemed to drop. Or perhaps, thought the man, that was his body gradually beginning to surrender to the cold and the wind. It seemed he had been walking for days, but that far north, night would not fall for another four months.
The man lifted his head to survey his surroundings. The wind had picked up and it was difficult to see anything through the wild and violent flurry of snow. The world grew colder and darker as the storm around him grew in ferocity, and just when the storm seemed darkest and the man felt like he couldn't walk another step, he saw the light.
Perhaps it was the storm, or just simply his imagination, but the light seemed to be flickering. Filled with a new determination, the man set out in pursuit of the light. He did not know where or what it was, or even that it truly existed outside of his crumbling mind, but he did know that he would not last long out in the storm.
The winds strength continued to increase, and the flurries of snow grew worse. The wind against his face felt like thousands of tiny needles and the pain from the cold was almost overwhelming. Clenching his eyes tightly shut from the external pain, and virtually blinded by the snow with only a flickering light to follow, it was no surprise that the man felt the gate before he saw it.
The gate was smooth and cold, like everything else around it. It was made of thick ice, and with his strength failing, the man struggled to push it. Eventually he managed to create a big enough gap for him to squeeze through. Inside the gate, he looked around. He was in a courtyard, unlike anything he had ever seen. A large dome loomed up in front of him, made entirely from ice. At its rounded top, stood a tall tower, also made of ice, and at its top was the orange light that he had been following. Surrounding the house was a thick ice wall, almost two metres high. It blocked most of the wind and the man was surprised to find how quiet it was. Directly in front of him, maybe twenty metres away, was a large ice door in the front of the dome. Assuming that this was an entrance, the man made his way towards it quickly, anxious to escape the elements. Tall statues stood guard in the courtyard. They were sinister looking sculptures, each one portraying a large and ferocious looking polar bear. The man did not stop and take time to examine the fine craftsmanship of the statues, but if he had he would have been astonished at the intricate carving, particularly around the mouth and jaws. Each bear had its jaws open and each and every one of its razor sharp teeth was clearly visible. In every eye, the artist had capture a look of pure anger and bloodlust.
The man knocked on the door, but there was no answer. For what seemed an eternity he hammered on the door, yelling until his voice was hoarse. Tired from his march through the snow, he quickly succumbed to fatigue and slumped hopelessly against the door. The last thing he remembered was a sense of despair as his eyelids closed, plunging him into a cold darkness.
He awoke in a soft bed, in a warm room with a bright, flickering fire. At first he was understandably confused. For a moment he thought he must be dead, although he quickly dismissed this idea when he saw the ice walls of the room and assumed he must simply be somewhere withing the building he had found in the storm.
The clothes he had arrived in were missing, as was the contents of his pockets. At the foot of his bed was a long robe which looked like it had been lifted directly out of the 18th century. At first he found this odd, but on a closer inspection of the room found that most of the rooms contents also seemed to be from that time period. The headboard of the bed in which he lay was covered with ornate carvings of gargoyles and in the center, protruding out into the room was a large, beautifully carved head of a polar bear. In its eyes and jaws was all the ferocity that was captured in the statues outside. The desk and wardrobe were made of the same, dark wood as the bed, and they also bore intricate carvings of gargoyles and savage polar bears.
He got out of bed and hurriedly dressed in the clothes that had been laid out for him. Before leaving the room, he stood in front of the fireplace, rubbing his hands together in front of the roaring fire. Curiosity overwhelmed him when he examined the fireplace and found it, like the rest of the room to be made of ice. He reached over the fire and felt the back wall of the fireplace. It was still cold and icy and showed no signs of melting from the heat of the fire.
“Curious” said the man to himself, retracting his hand from the fireplace.
He traversed the room and opened the door. The door swung open with a loud groan. The hallway outside was cold and bare. His footsteps reverberated off the icy walls as he set off to find whoever owned the house.
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