[u]????,January 19th, 2026
Somewhere in the Himalayas[/u]


The world was dark for a time. Then, a time after that, everything grew white and piercing. Around Ammutseba rose a landscape she had never seen before. Truth be told, her experience with landscapes as of yet was lacking.

 Great white mounds grew up from below, and soft whiteness fell from above. In the distance, jagged rock formations overlapped each other as far as she could see. There was a sensation that felt biting and splintering, it was in the emptiness and in the substance around her. 

 She was without understanding. And without the language for anything she may have understood. If she were to have had it, she may have told you she was scared, she may have said she was cold, but the language she knew did not know those words. The language she knew only had words for hunger and power and for things beyond good and evil. She did not understand the sky above, the falling snow, or the mountainous range around her. She did not understand the cold.

She knew wandering, and wander she did, carrying her half-formed shape through the snow. How long she drifted through the snow, she did not know. She was ill-suited for travel, perhaps ill-suited for the world she now found herself in.
 
She was a white shriveled monstrosity, abhorrent, yet pitiable. Her form seemed to shift with every movement, growing limbs and absorbing them again, unsure of how to fit herself together. Sometimes she had eyes, but the eyes were bit by the cold so she took them back. She beat without a heart, and without blood she pulsed. 

Then she sensed… something. Something else moved in the abyss of white. It was upright and tall with four distinct limbs. Two limbs they stood upon and two hung near its sides. Two eyes saw her, and a mouth gasped at her sight.
She reached out to it with her consciousness, and for a moment, she saw herself.

Hideous. Terrible. Misshapen. 

Then she saw deeper. She learned he was a man. She learned he was cold, a feeling she recognized in herself. She learned he was scared, a feeling she also recognized. She learned the name for snow, she learned the name for the world, she learned mountains, rivers, oceans, and stars. There was good and evil, things beyond hunger and power. She learned how to build a body to hold herself with. She saw bones and muscles and sinew. And in the last seconds of her learning, she learned what it felt like to be destroyed. There were things inside of life and death, and things beyond.

She stood now, upright, and tall. Four distinct limbs. Two eyes saw what was left of the man, and a mouth gasped at the sight. 

He was ripped apart, every part of him separated from the rest. Steam rose from the red stained snow. She had done this to him, though she had not meant to. If she had learned mourning, she would have exercised it here.

She scooped the red snow in her long, spindly fingers and stared at it for a time. Days passed.