1 Introduction

Eryn woke up to the feeling of cold air hitting her arms.

Her head was pounding, and her vision was blurry. A drop of water fell next to her face, splashing it lightly. She tried to lift her head up, but it felt too heavy, so she turned it slightly instead, in an attempt to identify her surroundings. It took several blinks for her dry eyes to differentiate shapes. She was laying on a cold, stone floor. It was damp, which only made her feel the cold even more. She started shaking, and the involuntary movement of her body trembling finally brought some life back into her muscles. She slowly sat herself, and wrapped her arms around her legs. She was freezing cold, and couldn’t feel her fingers or toes properly. Her dress had been torn badly, and her jacket was nowhere to be found.

Her vision finally recovered, and she looked to the right, towards the source of light and wind coming in, only to see a grey sky with many clouds threatening to pour down at any minute. She looked to her right; there was a wooden door. It looked very old, eaten at the sides. She was in some sort of cave. She dragged her body towards the exit of the cave, but when she reached the end, her stomach knotted and her palms became sweaty almost instantly. She was very high up, with nothing but a huge precipice under her. She felt sick, and crawled back towards the door for safety. She was terrified of heights.

Unable to move her limbs due to the fear of somehow falling, she put her back to the door and closed her eyes, scanning through her last memories before the moment she opened her eyes in that damned place.

Nothing. She couldn't remember a thing. She looked down at her dress to see if the pattern would ring a bell, but she didn’t recognise it either. If she had been wearing jewellery, it had been removed from her at some point. She sat there wondering how the hell she got there for a few minutes, and finally decided on going back to the edge of the cliff to see if there was a way to get down from there. Slowly, she crawled back to the corner and looked down. She couldn’t see the bottom. Her palms were now soaked in sweat, and she had to take a step back to compose herself. She took a few deep breaths and tried again, this time looking around instead of down. She thought she saw something not too far down from her. It looked like a window of some sort, but she couldn’t work out if it was big enough for her to fit through, and if it was, how was she even going to reach it? Then it downed on her - she hadn’t tried the door!

Eryn backed away slowly from the edge, and once she felt like she was at a safe distance, she grabbed a protruding rock from one of the walls and slowly got up, avoiding the sight of the sky as to not worsen her vertigo.

She reached the door and pushed it. The door creaked but didn’t move. She tried again, more creaking, but no movement. She looked in vain for a handle. 

She felt her anxiety creep up on her and the tears form in the corners of her eyes. A big knot on her throat prevented her from screaming, but she banged the door as hard as her sore muscles allowed her to. She stuck her ear to the door to listen to any sounds that might come from the inside, but all she could hear was the wind.

She felt so cold, she was sure she’d pass out from it. She sat back down on the floor and hugged herself as best as she could, and closed her eyes. She prayed it was all a nightmare, a horrible dream, and that she’d wake up in a cozy bed with the sun hitting her face.

At some point she fell asleep, the soreness of her body and the cold, along with the anxiety and fear had exhausted her. 

She was in such deep sleep, she didn’t hear the door opening.