Everyone, I think, is scared of being left alone. No one is ever prepared to be in the middle of a world that never really existed to them before. There's a vast difference between stories and being physically present in a place.

I fingered the hilt of my knife, not that it did any good against the barren wasteland that lay before me. There was nothing other than a few trees that jutted out of the ground, stubborn as though they were living just out of spite. No, there was nothing that my knife would protect me from, but it still felt good in my hand.

Everything was held in place by a white blanket of snow and the cold heaping on top of it. I'd barely taken two steps before it seeped into my boots and now some five hundred steps in, I barely remembered what it felt like to be warm and dry.

My nose ran and my skin prickled, but I trudged on, my footprints the only thing that changed the unforgiving tundra even as the wind threatened to pick me off the ground and blow me over.

For fear my fingers would crack off of cold, I twirled my knife through my fingers; a skill that'd only come to me through patience and a few more scars on my rough hands.

I turned, suddenly, staggering like an old drunkard to one of the trees that sliced through the gray nothingness. I leaned against the tree, taking the deepest breaths I could manage of the sharp air. My cloak hugged me, seemingly of its own will. I don't know how long I stayed like that.

It was a movement that woke me. And a cold. Something pressed itself against my side, letting cold ripple through my whole body. The sound of sniffing had filled the hostile air and I froze. Looking down, there was a bushy tail sticking out from my mantle. I felt something rustling against my leg and I reached for my knife. With it in my hand, I suddenly jumped up, my reflexes moving so I had my weapon at the throat of my assailant.

The metal seemed to do little to dissuade the snout and then the body all the way down to the tail of the animal coming to sniff my hand and nuzzle into it.

I hesitantly pet it, gently murmuring to it. "Hi, little buddy."

It didn't answer. "I'm talking to random wolves now."

He wasn't one to judge.

"I don't suppose you have a name?" I half asked.

I didn't expect him to answer, but it was still disappointing that he didn't.

"Well, I'm going to call you Razi. How's that?"

Razi walked away from me and sat down, so I kept talking.

"Well, Razi. I'm Gus. Nice to meet you."

Razi didn't show any interest in me.

"You want to know why I'm here?"

The creature showed no interest in me, so naturally, I told it.