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It’s quiet.

Which, alright, shouldn’t really be what you’re focusing on. You should be thinking about the steadily dropping temperature or the dampness currently trying to seep through your clothes. Either one would be more appropriate, considering you’re walking through a foot or so of snow. And more is falling every second.

But, in all honesty, your boots are doing a pretty good job of keeping both of those things away from your shins and feet. And your making sure to keep those oh-so-easily frostbitten fingers tucked into your sleeves and close to your chest.

So no, the cold or the wet isn’t really something you're too worried about.

But it’s really quiet.

You’ve never noticed how used to hearing some kind of background noise you are. People, machines, or even animals usually make up the ambient sounds of your life. Not directly, of course. You aren’t really the kind of person that invites random conversations with strangers. Or to use noisy machinery on a daily basis. You definitely don’t have any pets, seeing as how you can barely take care of yourself on a good day. But that’s not what you’re missing at the moment. What you're thinking of is more just the background white noise of living in a populated area; of sound around you, not including you.

But now the only person out here is you. Hell, the only living thing stupid enough to be traipsing about in this weather is you. You haven’t seen any kind of animals since you started this trek. No deer among the tree trunks, no squirrels or birds up in the branches. There’s nothing out here.

Except you.

There is some noise though. You can hear your own steps as you trudge through the snow. Normally it’s be a loud crunching noise but since you started walking snow’s been coming down in big, slow flakes; so instead of the normal loud sound you’re accustomed to your steps are making a soft, shushing sound as your shins push through the snow drifts.

You can hear your breathing too, as it rasps against the collar of your coat. You’ve got it pulled up high enough to cover your mouth and nose so you can feel the damp heat of every huff.

As you continue to plod along, you can feel an ache starting to build in your legs. It’s not enough to be dangerous (yet) but it is enough to remind you how this may not have been the best idea. And if you’re being honest with yourself (since you don’t really have anything else to do), this is just the latest entry on a long list of stupid choices you’re apparently collecting. And you don’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon. It feels like everything you’ve done lately has somehow managed to backfire on you in progressively creative ways.

This isn’t the worst on the list by far but the longer you walk the higher on the list it climbs.

You snort and shake your head at they way your mind has wandered. Yeah, you make shitty choices. So what? You deal with it and move on. You’re getting pretty good at that part actually. How about you focus on the here and now, genius. ‘Here’ being the middle of snow covered nowhere and ‘now’ being about 20 feet further across this clearing that you’ve been trying to cross for…

s**t. A while now.

And it’s so quiet.

It’s starting to get on your nerves a bit. ‘Slightly Perturbing’ would be a good phrase to describe it if you were feeling up to using a ten-dollar word. But since you’re not, ‘annoying’ will do just fine. You vaguely remember reading something about how falling snow muffles noise but you can’t remember the speci-

********!

…

Alright, so. Note to self.

Just because the field you’re walking through looks bare because of the snow covering it, doesn’t mean there isn’t stuff underneath the snow. Like the rock your foot managed to find and use to trip you, face first, into the aforementioned snow.

So now, here you are. With a cold, wet face and a probably (hopefully just) bruised foot. A few seconds of cussing into the snow is a totally acceptable response, right?

Right.

After melting the snow for a bit (although it’s probably less from your foul language and more from the heat of your breath), you push up from the cold ground and manage to get back on your feet.

Yep, that foot is definitely bruised. At least it’s not broken.

...probably.

So now you get to ignore the throbbing of your foot as well as all of the other stuff going through your head. Joy.