Hey! It looks like you're new here. You might want to check out the introduction.
Show rules for this event
Prologue to Winter
Rimis the Ancient woke up, stared at the roof of his yurt, and began to get up. He threw off his blanket, a dense patchwork of wolverine pelts that was just beginning to smell, then rolled until his knees were braced against the ground. It took him a little while to stand, and he stumbled once or twice, but he was standing straight before too long. Rimis smiled, and began to take slow, deliberate steps toward the great chest that held his clothes.
At least, he called it a chest. In truth, it was little more than a gutted bit of an old log, sealed against wind and dust by a crude lid hewn from the same log. Held within were the wrappings of his station, and beneath them was concealed the greatly coveted Dragon Cloak of Nybere.
Rimis had no idea why the Dragon Cloak of Nybere was so coveted. Throughout his entire life, he had never heard the word ‘dragon’ used in any other context than to refer to the cloak. He always assumed that it meant ‘smells like old bear’.
He opened the chest very slowly, taking care not to drop the sturdy lid or lean too hard against the heavy wood. He spent almost half an hour slowly wrapping himself up in the various layers of woven cloth and animal skins, until finally the only thing left in the chest was the cloak itself. Rimis stared down at the heavy old thing, and wondered if it was even worth wearing today. Then a strong gust of wind blew in through the tent flap, and the old man couldn’t help but shiver.
“Yes,” he told the empty yurt. “Yes, I think I will.”
Once upon a time, the Dragon Cloak of Nybere might have been a truly intimidating bear-skin cloak. When he had been younger, Rimis had dreamed of mighty warriors wearing the cloak, its earthy brown making them seem invisible against the backdrop of the trees. Then he had seen it, a truly glorious patchwork of pelts that ranged from wolf to fox and had a fringe of squirrel tails, but still had that heady bear musk despite all reason. When one of the patches had begun to fray and tear, Rimis had wept, believing the great relic would soon pass to dust. That was when his father had shown him something beautiful.
Ranak had taken his hunting boomerang, carved from the bone of an elephant, and guided Rimis out over the hills until their village could not be seen. Then he had thrown the boomerang, and in a single blow he had felled a fox. Without even bothering to return to the village, he had skinned the fox, treated the skin, taken the cloak from his back and began to patch the weak spots. When he was done, he showed it to his son.
“Tell me, Rimis. Is this the Dragon Cloak of Nybere?”
Young and foolish as he had been, Rimis had not understood his father at first. “Of course it is, father.”
“But it has been changed. See here, where once there was a bit of wolverine that was worn thin, there is now fresh foxfur. Is it the same cloak?”
That had been a bit of a puzzle for the young man, and he had spent quite a few long seconds scrutinizing the cloak. “Yes?”, he hazarded, and was rewarded with a genial smile from his father.
“Quite correct, my boy. Though the material has changed, it is still the same cloak. As the pelts grow old, they will need to be replaced. New animals will be killed, the skinning might be done in a different way, and you might decide to add a tasteful design here or there. But, and this is important, even when there is not a single hair of these pelts left in the cloak, it will still be the Dragon Cloak of Nybere.”
Those had been better days, for Rimis and the cloak both. With every year that passed, Rimis had a little less passion for his sacred duty, and so every year the cloak moved further and further away from the glory it had seen under Ranak’s careful hands. The cloak was allowed to sit and molder for far longer, and rather than seek out the best new pelts, Rimis would often only kill whatever was closest. Had the Dragon Cloak of Nybere been the sort of thing that ne’er-do-wells and rogues still hunted for, they would not have recognized the tattered covering that Rimis now threw across his back as their prey.
Rimis sighed as he fastened the clasp, the cloak feeling heavier on his shoulders than it usually did. The little part of him that still cared about the cloak felt like his entire life was crashing down around him, and had been doing so for the past three years. He hadn’t been able to find and kill any animals with the proper kind of pelts for far too long. Gone were the days of brilliant crimson and chestnut brown; the animals of today were as pale and white as sun-bleached bone.
But Rimis still had a duty, so he put the lid back on the chest and trudged along the inner edge of the yurt until he reached the flap to the outside world. He reached out for the walking stick that lay beside the flap, and let almost all of his weight fall on the old thing. Thusly anchored, Rimis bent down and picked up his hunting boomerang. His father’s boomerang.
The cloak felt somehow heavier as Rimis slotted the boomerang into the custom-made loop in his belt. The metal clasp pressed against his neck, and for a moment it seemed to grow colder than the coldest wind. Perhaps it was remembering his father. Remembering better days, when the animals were strong and dark and actually ran away when a hunter advanced on them. These days, Rimis very nearly felt bad for hunting, the animals were so slow and fat. He had never been one to hunt for sport, but all the same, this felt like the very antithesis of sporting.
Still, it was that or try his luck at plowing the earth, and Rimis wasn’t quite so proud that he’d starve to death instead of take an easy hunt. So he drew back the yurt’s flap, and took the day’s first step out into the world.
Perhaps the most beautiful sound that any hunter can hear is the sound of their weapon striking true, landing a killing blow despite any and all odds. Fat and lazy or not, the sound of a rabbit’s skull caving in around a hunting boomerang from ten yards away was wont to make Rimis the Ancient feel ten years old again. He all but bounded over the cold earth to gather his kill, and he eagerly tore out his boomerang and lifted the rabbit into the pouch that hung at his side. It would make a good meal, and a good pair of mittens as well. Out of habit, Rimis checked the cloak, but was pleased to see that it did not need patching. Not at the moment, anyway.
Rimis checked to make sure that his pouch was still secure, and couldn’t help but laugh as he looked at the rabbit. He could not remember ever killing a brown rabbit with quite so much meat on it. He briefly considered that it might be a farmer’s pet, but quickly put that silly notion out of his mind.
“As if one of them would give up this much green, and then let you wander off.” Rimis chuckled, not even caring that he had just spoken to a dead rabbit, and pulled himself back up to a standing position. As he cleaned his boomerang on a scrap of old badger, a gust of wind blew in from the south and shook the branches of a nearby tree. Rimis looked up, and his wistful smile became a somber frown.
He remembered leaves. Once, they had been everywhere. Of course, he had only ever seen them in sparse clumps, but he had heard stories from his elders, who had heard stories from their elders of a time when trees were full of leaves. He remembered how once, on one of his father’s great southerly hunting trips, he had stumbled across a tree that was at least half-covered in leaves. The colors, like all the most beautiful sunsets of his life all laid out at once, had moved a young Rimis to tears.
Nobody could tell him why the leaves fell. None of them could say what it was that made trees such bare and lifeless things, or why leaves did not grow back like the fruit bushes did. And if there were any who could tell him, they simply would not say.
Rimis remembered one time, a little over seven years past, that he had come across a couple of young farmer boys harvesting the bushes that grew around one bare tree. He had asked them, “Can either of you tell me why the leaves fall?”
The older of the two boys had turned to him and said, “Why should we tell you anything, old man? You will be dead soon enough anyway!”
Rimis had seen the wisdom in the boy’s words, and considered the matter closed. So instead he asked them, “Could you at least tell me why it is that the animals are becoming so pale and white, and why their coats become so thick and heavy? As you say, I will soon be dead, so you need not fear that I will share your secrets with any more of us foolish hunters.”
The appeal to their ego had not worked. The younger of the two boys had looked up at him and said, “What use would such things be to you? You will change nothing by simply knowing, and you scarcely have time to keep your stomach full. Better that we answer such questions as asked by the young, so that they learn and their young can ask different questions.”
Rimis had gone away from the two farmers with a wide smile on his face, and humility fresh in his heart. Much as he had heard his fellow hunters mock the farmers in his younger days, he knew that even the most foolish of them was far wiser than he could ever be. They could carve good, rich food out of the earth, while he had to depend first on the cleverness of the animals simply so that his kill would have enough meat on its bones to be worth killing. True, he still did not know why the world was changing, but he had learned on that day that he did not need to know.
Still, he would have liked to know. Perhaps the world would feel less empty, if only he knew why it felt like that.
For as long as Rimis the Ancient had lived, the world had been cold. The water was cold, the air was cold, and the earth was cold. There were only three things in the world that Rimis knew to be warm; the blood of a fresh kill, the roar of a fire, and the rays of the sun. He had never in all his life spoken to anyone who remembered the world being otherwise, nor had he ever dreamed of a world that was not cold. It was simply the way of the world, that a man needed to cover himself if ever he wished to leave the yurt.
Even so, Rimis had never known a colder wind than the one that now swept over him. All his wrappings might as well have been absent for all the good they did him, and the Dragon Cloak of Nybere suddenly seemed much more full of holes than it truly was. His hand tightened around his walking stick until he was sure that his bones would burst out through his flesh, and he turned to go back to his yurt. The rabbit would be enough to tide him over until the wind died down, then he could come back and do a proper hunt. It was inconvenient, to be sure, but at least he had something to show for his efforts.
That was when Rimis turned his gaze skyward, and saw a change in the world that dwarfed all others.
There, softly falling down to earth from amidst the wind, there came something quite unlike Rimis had ever seen in his forty years of life. It glittered and sparkled like the noonday sun reflecting off of water, yet it seemed to be no larger than the space between two hairs. Overcome by curiosity and briefly forgetting the cold, Rimis dared to stretch out his aging hand towards the heavens. The strange thing fell closer, then closer still, then finally came to rest in the palm of his hand.
Rimis fell back in shock, and he screamed in pain and terror as he clutched his hand to his chest. That thing... It was impossible. It had been cold, far colder than anything he had ever known, as though all of the wind around him had been pressed down into a single pinprick of burning coldness. His hand felt numb to the touch, and his fingers refused to move. He did not dare turn his hand to look at the thing, for it felt as though it had torn away most of his palm.
Had Rimis not been so distracted by the shock of touching the snowflake, he might have looked up, and seen the gathering clouds. Perhaps it was best that he did no such thing, but instead ran back to his yurt as soon as he was able.
This is Nybere. It is a slow world; slow to turn, slow to change, and slow to learn from its mistakes. Every season lasts three hundred years on Nybere, and through a combination of harsh weather conditions and some interesting genetic quirks, its inhabitants rarely live longer than thirty years at a time. By the time autumn rolls around, spring is such a distant memory that it is no longer remembered. For the most part, the people of Nybere live well enough, if more than a little ignorant to the ways of the world.
One would hope that they would make up for this by being fast learners. But then, hope doesn’t mean much in a snowstorm.
At least, he called it a chest. In truth, it was little more than a gutted bit of an old log, sealed against wind and dust by a crude lid hewn from the same log. Held within were the wrappings of his station, and beneath them was concealed the greatly coveted Dragon Cloak of Nybere.
Rimis had no idea why the Dragon Cloak of Nybere was so coveted. Throughout his entire life, he had never heard the word ‘dragon’ used in any other context than to refer to the cloak. He always assumed that it meant ‘smells like old bear’.
He opened the chest very slowly, taking care not to drop the sturdy lid or lean too hard against the heavy wood. He spent almost half an hour slowly wrapping himself up in the various layers of woven cloth and animal skins, until finally the only thing left in the chest was the cloak itself. Rimis stared down at the heavy old thing, and wondered if it was even worth wearing today. Then a strong gust of wind blew in through the tent flap, and the old man couldn’t help but shiver.
“Yes,” he told the empty yurt. “Yes, I think I will.”
Once upon a time, the Dragon Cloak of Nybere might have been a truly intimidating bear-skin cloak. When he had been younger, Rimis had dreamed of mighty warriors wearing the cloak, its earthy brown making them seem invisible against the backdrop of the trees. Then he had seen it, a truly glorious patchwork of pelts that ranged from wolf to fox and had a fringe of squirrel tails, but still had that heady bear musk despite all reason. When one of the patches had begun to fray and tear, Rimis had wept, believing the great relic would soon pass to dust. That was when his father had shown him something beautiful.
Ranak had taken his hunting boomerang, carved from the bone of an elephant, and guided Rimis out over the hills until their village could not be seen. Then he had thrown the boomerang, and in a single blow he had felled a fox. Without even bothering to return to the village, he had skinned the fox, treated the skin, taken the cloak from his back and began to patch the weak spots. When he was done, he showed it to his son.
“Tell me, Rimis. Is this the Dragon Cloak of Nybere?”
Young and foolish as he had been, Rimis had not understood his father at first. “Of course it is, father.”
“But it has been changed. See here, where once there was a bit of wolverine that was worn thin, there is now fresh foxfur. Is it the same cloak?”
That had been a bit of a puzzle for the young man, and he had spent quite a few long seconds scrutinizing the cloak. “Yes?”, he hazarded, and was rewarded with a genial smile from his father.
“Quite correct, my boy. Though the material has changed, it is still the same cloak. As the pelts grow old, they will need to be replaced. New animals will be killed, the skinning might be done in a different way, and you might decide to add a tasteful design here or there. But, and this is important, even when there is not a single hair of these pelts left in the cloak, it will still be the Dragon Cloak of Nybere.”
Those had been better days, for Rimis and the cloak both. With every year that passed, Rimis had a little less passion for his sacred duty, and so every year the cloak moved further and further away from the glory it had seen under Ranak’s careful hands. The cloak was allowed to sit and molder for far longer, and rather than seek out the best new pelts, Rimis would often only kill whatever was closest. Had the Dragon Cloak of Nybere been the sort of thing that ne’er-do-wells and rogues still hunted for, they would not have recognized the tattered covering that Rimis now threw across his back as their prey.
Rimis sighed as he fastened the clasp, the cloak feeling heavier on his shoulders than it usually did. The little part of him that still cared about the cloak felt like his entire life was crashing down around him, and had been doing so for the past three years. He hadn’t been able to find and kill any animals with the proper kind of pelts for far too long. Gone were the days of brilliant crimson and chestnut brown; the animals of today were as pale and white as sun-bleached bone.
But Rimis still had a duty, so he put the lid back on the chest and trudged along the inner edge of the yurt until he reached the flap to the outside world. He reached out for the walking stick that lay beside the flap, and let almost all of his weight fall on the old thing. Thusly anchored, Rimis bent down and picked up his hunting boomerang. His father’s boomerang.
The cloak felt somehow heavier as Rimis slotted the boomerang into the custom-made loop in his belt. The metal clasp pressed against his neck, and for a moment it seemed to grow colder than the coldest wind. Perhaps it was remembering his father. Remembering better days, when the animals were strong and dark and actually ran away when a hunter advanced on them. These days, Rimis very nearly felt bad for hunting, the animals were so slow and fat. He had never been one to hunt for sport, but all the same, this felt like the very antithesis of sporting.
Still, it was that or try his luck at plowing the earth, and Rimis wasn’t quite so proud that he’d starve to death instead of take an easy hunt. So he drew back the yurt’s flap, and took the day’s first step out into the world.
Perhaps the most beautiful sound that any hunter can hear is the sound of their weapon striking true, landing a killing blow despite any and all odds. Fat and lazy or not, the sound of a rabbit’s skull caving in around a hunting boomerang from ten yards away was wont to make Rimis the Ancient feel ten years old again. He all but bounded over the cold earth to gather his kill, and he eagerly tore out his boomerang and lifted the rabbit into the pouch that hung at his side. It would make a good meal, and a good pair of mittens as well. Out of habit, Rimis checked the cloak, but was pleased to see that it did not need patching. Not at the moment, anyway.
Rimis checked to make sure that his pouch was still secure, and couldn’t help but laugh as he looked at the rabbit. He could not remember ever killing a brown rabbit with quite so much meat on it. He briefly considered that it might be a farmer’s pet, but quickly put that silly notion out of his mind.
“As if one of them would give up this much green, and then let you wander off.” Rimis chuckled, not even caring that he had just spoken to a dead rabbit, and pulled himself back up to a standing position. As he cleaned his boomerang on a scrap of old badger, a gust of wind blew in from the south and shook the branches of a nearby tree. Rimis looked up, and his wistful smile became a somber frown.
He remembered leaves. Once, they had been everywhere. Of course, he had only ever seen them in sparse clumps, but he had heard stories from his elders, who had heard stories from their elders of a time when trees were full of leaves. He remembered how once, on one of his father’s great southerly hunting trips, he had stumbled across a tree that was at least half-covered in leaves. The colors, like all the most beautiful sunsets of his life all laid out at once, had moved a young Rimis to tears.
Nobody could tell him why the leaves fell. None of them could say what it was that made trees such bare and lifeless things, or why leaves did not grow back like the fruit bushes did. And if there were any who could tell him, they simply would not say.
Rimis remembered one time, a little over seven years past, that he had come across a couple of young farmer boys harvesting the bushes that grew around one bare tree. He had asked them, “Can either of you tell me why the leaves fall?”
The older of the two boys had turned to him and said, “Why should we tell you anything, old man? You will be dead soon enough anyway!”
Rimis had seen the wisdom in the boy’s words, and considered the matter closed. So instead he asked them, “Could you at least tell me why it is that the animals are becoming so pale and white, and why their coats become so thick and heavy? As you say, I will soon be dead, so you need not fear that I will share your secrets with any more of us foolish hunters.”
The appeal to their ego had not worked. The younger of the two boys had looked up at him and said, “What use would such things be to you? You will change nothing by simply knowing, and you scarcely have time to keep your stomach full. Better that we answer such questions as asked by the young, so that they learn and their young can ask different questions.”
Rimis had gone away from the two farmers with a wide smile on his face, and humility fresh in his heart. Much as he had heard his fellow hunters mock the farmers in his younger days, he knew that even the most foolish of them was far wiser than he could ever be. They could carve good, rich food out of the earth, while he had to depend first on the cleverness of the animals simply so that his kill would have enough meat on its bones to be worth killing. True, he still did not know why the world was changing, but he had learned on that day that he did not need to know.
Still, he would have liked to know. Perhaps the world would feel less empty, if only he knew why it felt like that.
For as long as Rimis the Ancient had lived, the world had been cold. The water was cold, the air was cold, and the earth was cold. There were only three things in the world that Rimis knew to be warm; the blood of a fresh kill, the roar of a fire, and the rays of the sun. He had never in all his life spoken to anyone who remembered the world being otherwise, nor had he ever dreamed of a world that was not cold. It was simply the way of the world, that a man needed to cover himself if ever he wished to leave the yurt.
Even so, Rimis had never known a colder wind than the one that now swept over him. All his wrappings might as well have been absent for all the good they did him, and the Dragon Cloak of Nybere suddenly seemed much more full of holes than it truly was. His hand tightened around his walking stick until he was sure that his bones would burst out through his flesh, and he turned to go back to his yurt. The rabbit would be enough to tide him over until the wind died down, then he could come back and do a proper hunt. It was inconvenient, to be sure, but at least he had something to show for his efforts.
That was when Rimis turned his gaze skyward, and saw a change in the world that dwarfed all others.
There, softly falling down to earth from amidst the wind, there came something quite unlike Rimis had ever seen in his forty years of life. It glittered and sparkled like the noonday sun reflecting off of water, yet it seemed to be no larger than the space between two hairs. Overcome by curiosity and briefly forgetting the cold, Rimis dared to stretch out his aging hand towards the heavens. The strange thing fell closer, then closer still, then finally came to rest in the palm of his hand.
Rimis fell back in shock, and he screamed in pain and terror as he clutched his hand to his chest. That thing... It was impossible. It had been cold, far colder than anything he had ever known, as though all of the wind around him had been pressed down into a single pinprick of burning coldness. His hand felt numb to the touch, and his fingers refused to move. He did not dare turn his hand to look at the thing, for it felt as though it had torn away most of his palm.
Had Rimis not been so distracted by the shock of touching the snowflake, he might have looked up, and seen the gathering clouds. Perhaps it was best that he did no such thing, but instead ran back to his yurt as soon as he was able.
This is Nybere. It is a slow world; slow to turn, slow to change, and slow to learn from its mistakes. Every season lasts three hundred years on Nybere, and through a combination of harsh weather conditions and some interesting genetic quirks, its inhabitants rarely live longer than thirty years at a time. By the time autumn rolls around, spring is such a distant memory that it is no longer remembered. For the most part, the people of Nybere live well enough, if more than a little ignorant to the ways of the world.
One would hope that they would make up for this by being fast learners. But then, hope doesn’t mean much in a snowstorm.
This story had an interesting start, with its Ship of Theseus cloak and suggestions of fantastic things at work. Rimis's encounter with the farmers had an almost fable-like sense to it. Easily my favorite part of the story.
The part with the snow was a bit weaker. Then the ending... just cut that part out, author. It serves no purpose -- in fact, it serves a negative purpose, summarizing the entire story that we've just read, thus negating all the effort that we put into reading it. It's the information dump that novice authors tend to put at the beginning of their stories, and it doesn't do any more good here at the end.
The part with the snow was a bit weaker. Then the ending... just cut that part out, author. It serves no purpose -- in fact, it serves a negative purpose, summarizing the entire story that we've just read, thus negating all the effort that we put into reading it. It's the information dump that novice authors tend to put at the beginning of their stories, and it doesn't do any more good here at the end.
Is snow really that cold? I think you're really overstating the pain and terror from catching a snowflake, or else it's something way different than any other snowflake I've ever seen.
I'll disagree with CiG: I found the ending to work somewhat better but the interaction with the farmers to be a little stilted in a way that didn't seem to accomplish much for me. (The last line in particular though does kill it)
The problem for me is there's a lot of setup here though that doesn't actually seem to meaningfully pay off. The cloak is great... but what's the point? I don't really feel like I know the point of any of this at all, other than a look at humans adapted to living on a weird planet. And did the only living to be 30 actually come into play anywhere other than the exposition at the end? It doesn't necessarily strike me that a society of this sort in a harsh environment would have people living for ages even on Earth.
Rimis himself basically meanders through a day; if there was more going on, if he had some kind of compelling problem or stakes (perhaps if he really cared about the Dragon Cloak and was struggling to properly mend it), the turn to winter at the end might actually mean something - make it more clear that things are changing in a big way that's really going to make a difference and prevent him from accomplishing his goals, perhaps. I think that's what this story is missing.
I'll disagree with CiG: I found the ending to work somewhat better but the interaction with the farmers to be a little stilted in a way that didn't seem to accomplish much for me. (The last line in particular though does kill it)
The problem for me is there's a lot of setup here though that doesn't actually seem to meaningfully pay off. The cloak is great... but what's the point? I don't really feel like I know the point of any of this at all, other than a look at humans adapted to living on a weird planet. And did the only living to be 30 actually come into play anywhere other than the exposition at the end? It doesn't necessarily strike me that a society of this sort in a harsh environment would have people living for ages even on Earth.
Rimis himself basically meanders through a day; if there was more going on, if he had some kind of compelling problem or stakes (perhaps if he really cared about the Dragon Cloak and was struggling to properly mend it), the turn to winter at the end might actually mean something - make it more clear that things are changing in a big way that's really going to make a difference and prevent him from accomplishing his goals, perhaps. I think that's what this story is missing.
Rimis the Ancient woke up, stared at the roof of his yurt, and began to get up. He threw off his blanket, a dense patchwork of wolverine pelts that was just beginning to smell, then rolled until his knees were braced against the ground. It took him a little while to stand, and he stumbled once or twice, but he was standing straight before too long. Rimis smiled, and began to take slow, deliberate steps toward the great chest that held his clothes.
As always, I have opinions on first impressions. This opening paragraph is way too ponderous. At a time when you most need to be giving the reader something punchy to hook them into the story, we get four sentences of an old man slowly getting out of bed. Variations on his slowness are described multiple times in a row. You use "began to"/"beginning to" three times — which even aside from the repetition is questionable writing to begin with — and more nitpickily, I question the idea of a pelt blanket "just beginning to smell". Pelts are tanned (or cured, one of the two) before being used in that sort of context; while that can introduce smells of its own, AFAIK they don't "start to" stink over time, as they would if the flesh were rotting.
Rimis had no idea why the Dragon Cloak of Nybere was so coveted. Throughout his entire life, he had never heard the word ‘dragon’ used in any other context than to refer to the cloak. He always assumed that it meant ‘smells like old bear’.
On the other hand, seeing this in paragraph three made me much happier. This subverts the generic-feeling low fantasy and shows some stylistic teeth.
Continued reactions while reading:
metal clasp
Wait what? How are fur-wearing boomerang-throwing nomadic hunters working metal?
"Better that we answer such questions as asked by the young, so that they learn and their young can ask different questions …"
In the time it took him to say that, he could have just answered Rimis' question. Just sayin'.
True, he still did not know why the world was changing, but he had learned on that day that he did not need to know.
This feels like BS to me. He got mocked by some farmers for trying to learn things because he's old, and his response is to agree and endorse ignorance? Is the story moralizing at me that old people shouldn't learn?
That seems like a nitpicky complaint, but it's actually the core of the entire scene. You introduce the question of why the world has changed, tell us that there are people in the setting who know the answer, and then very pointedly refuse to give it to us, the readers. Charitably, this could be viewed as worldbuilding commentary on this society's culture — but your story isn't about those farmers but about Rimis, making Rimis' reaction central here, and choosing to embrace deliberate ignorance about the thing that keeps him alive day to day is not how human beings work.
(Ones that stay alive, anyway.)
This would have been a lot more compelling if he pressed for answers (maybe pointing out, as I did, that they could have answered him in the time it took to argue with him), and then they offered to sell him the knowledge and he refused. Then the readers still don't get to learn how your world works, but in exchange you're making a statement about what is worth sacrificing for knowledge. Hell, have them offer to trade the secret for his ratty old brown cloak (which can't even be fixed because of the lack of brown animals, so they're doing him a favor taking it off of his hands) — that ties the scene back into your focal plot point.
Having thought of that, I really want to know what Rimis' reaction would be to the offer, and why.
Rimis fell back in shock, and he screamed in pain and terror as he clutched his hand to his chest.
I'm sorry, this just doesn't work. There's the reason >>Ferd Threstle noted, which similarly broke me out of the scene … but the logic problems pile up on top of that:
1) The entirety of the storm is a single snowflake falling?
2) For his whole life it's been freezing, so this implies that he's lived decades without ever seeing precipitation. How does anything live under those conditions? (How agriculture works in a land of eternal frost is a different fridge logic problem, noted here in passing.)
3) If there's no snow then there is no evolutionary reason why the animals around him would start turning white
And yeah, that ending isn't doing you any favors.
This shows some definite promise (I too liked the cloak discussion), but the rest just doesn't feel like it's coalescing yet. That's no dig on you as an author; the Writeoffs are a tight deadline and it's hard to fully bake a story in the time allotted. Further drafts will really smooth this out.
Tier: Needs Work
I thought the opening to this story was very intriguing. The whole idea of a hunter that has to maintain a failing coat was an interesting concept, as was the idea that he was the hunter largely being overrun by a farming society. It tied into the idea of him slowly descending from the supposed virtues of his forefathers, and the fear that he was somehow a failure amidst all of this.
The story really stumbles towards the latter parts. For starters, the snow reaction makes no sense to me. Isn't the whole idea that the world is already cold? If that's the case, it would reason that the cold would also bring snow far quicker than the supposed 30 years the ending implies would happen. Also, why would a man who's lived in the cold react so harshly to one speck of snow? Living in the cold all his life should've numbed him to such a thing. Finally, that ending section is just way too overexplanatory. The story functioned fine as a vague sort of parable; in fact, its vagueness was one of its greatest strengths, making it seem like this story could be happening anywhere at anytime. That ending, however, tried to hard to provide an explanation for these occurrences, instead of letting it occur without any narrative weigh-down. Sometimes background helps, but here it distracts instead. What you leave out of a story is just as important as what you put in, and this part definitely needs to be left out.
A story with a good start, but not quite able to maintain the momentum.
The story really stumbles towards the latter parts. For starters, the snow reaction makes no sense to me. Isn't the whole idea that the world is already cold? If that's the case, it would reason that the cold would also bring snow far quicker than the supposed 30 years the ending implies would happen. Also, why would a man who's lived in the cold react so harshly to one speck of snow? Living in the cold all his life should've numbed him to such a thing. Finally, that ending section is just way too overexplanatory. The story functioned fine as a vague sort of parable; in fact, its vagueness was one of its greatest strengths, making it seem like this story could be happening anywhere at anytime. That ending, however, tried to hard to provide an explanation for these occurrences, instead of letting it occur without any narrative weigh-down. Sometimes background helps, but here it distracts instead. What you leave out of a story is just as important as what you put in, and this part definitely needs to be left out.
A story with a good start, but not quite able to maintain the momentum.
I liked the sense of heaviness that this conveyed. The conversation between Old Dude and Farmer Dudes felt pitch-perfect, up to and including the "lesson" that he didn't need to know. As much as the ending disrupts the rest of the narrative flow, I felt it was a useful explanation of why everything was going the way it did.
With that said, I don't understand the whole animals-turning-white thing. I also don't know why the farmers are doing so much better if Winter Is Coming... wouldn't everyone be pretty equally screwed if there weren't robust stocks of produce hidden somewhere to get them through the 100-generation-long winter?
So while there are some aspects of the story and world that don't make sense upon further reflection, I really liked the mood it established. I also thought Old Dude was a pretty solid character. I do wish he had more of a payoff for his arc at the end, though. And seriously, his reaction to the snow was so extreme that I wondered if there was going to be some kind of swerve about nuclear winter or related shenanigans.
With that said, I don't understand the whole animals-turning-white thing. I also don't know why the farmers are doing so much better if Winter Is Coming... wouldn't everyone be pretty equally screwed if there weren't robust stocks of produce hidden somewhere to get them through the 100-generation-long winter?
So while there are some aspects of the story and world that don't make sense upon further reflection, I really liked the mood it established. I also thought Old Dude was a pretty solid character. I do wish he had more of a payoff for his arc at the end, though. And seriously, his reaction to the snow was so extreme that I wondered if there was going to be some kind of swerve about nuclear winter or related shenanigans.