Chapter Eight: Prayer in the Storm
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HiddenMaster
Getting sticky.
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I woke up, still leaning against Mom. Outside, the wind howled, barely muffled by the thick walls. I couldn't tell how much time had passed. It could've been evening or morning out there. I shivered. My breath didn't mist, but it was colder than it had been last night.
Mom hadn't moved.
I shook Mom, but it was to no avail. I placed my ear to her chest and barely noticed any warmth, but the burst of panic I felt stilled as I noticed her chest moving with small breaths, if only slightly. I nearly tripped as I stood and hurriedly checked the fire.
The fire had died sometime during the night while I was asleep, but to my relief I saw some faint coals lingered. I hadn't actually made a fire from scratch despite Mom showing me how, but I had stoked the fire plenty of times before, so I could at least do this much. Moving stiffly, I scrutinized our wood stocks with numb concern. We kept two, one further outdoors a ways from the apartment we lived in and a much smaller pile indoors for convenience.
The indoor wood box was mostly depleted, with only a log and some small branches left. Mom usually filled it up each morning with a little bit of my help, but she couldn't exactly handle that now. I tossed the last few logs from the nearby pile into the hearth and absently wondered if it was time for breakfast. Or lunch. I had no idea what time it actually was.
My stomach growled.
"Oh," I said aloud. I was hungry. That was a problem. Last night's feast was only one comparatively. It still wasn't huge by my old life's standards. I doubt it was huge for anyone who wasn't a small child.
Making blue rice should not be difficult. At least, I didn't think so. I helped Mom chop foraged greens and set seaweed up to dry. I also had a wealth of experience from my old life that fortunately went to actual recipes and not just…romen? Or was it ramen? That didn't sound right. I couldn't remember.
I shook my head. I just hadn't cooked using Mom's stove before.
The portable stove was easy enough to identify. It only had a few buttons with sigils for cold and hot going from left to right. It really seemed designed for simplicity's sake. For all I knew, it was designed to be so simple exactly for this sort of situation. Although unlike the silver battery on the lights, this one had a canister of some liquid at the base, about half full. It heated up in a few minutes, and I was able to draw some water from a nearby jug without issue. I grabbed two handfuls of dry rice, and awkwardly plopped them in; one handful for me, and one for Mom when she woke up. I then waited for it to come to a boil.
I felt like there should have been more fanfare, but there really wasn't. It felt a bit odd intruding on an act Mom had always handled, but it wasn't entirely unfamiliar. I could cook well enough to feed myself in my old life. I might have even been better than my peers given my father had been useless in the kitchen. Even the stove would've been similar to some things in my old life given its dial that could be alternated between a blue and red symbol for hot and cold.
The stove top chose that moment to promptly turn off for no apparent reason. I stared and pretended it would come back on. I checked the liquid container and saw still had some. I even tapped the buttons some more. It didn't work. A few minutes of fruitlessly tinkering and I gave up with the rice barely half cooked. Crunchy rice wasn't nice, but it was still better than smellyweed soup.
My standards for this world might be low.
It was at that moment I realized the winds hadn't stopped since I'd woken up. If anything, they'd gotten louder. Uneased yet curious, I made sure my Mom was still covered in her blanket and tucked in before I left. I made my way to a more distant we'd kept some non-food forage from the island's interior in and I knew had a window to glance outside.
My first thought was, sadly, not that eloquent. "Holy shit those clouds are dark" is not something I think would get me anything but dry looks if I said it aloud in any time period or world. Secondly, I shrieked as a gust of arctic air rushed through the opened gap in the window to freeze me out of nowhere. I fell over but was back on my not quite feet in a second and hurriedly pushing the wood blinds closed. They barely helped as wind slipped between thick wood blinds and still stung my skin. Only closing the door had an impact and I could still very much hear and feel the cold wind.
I panted and shivered as I leaned against the door
This wasn't good. Storms were bad. Mom wasn't up to close the fort down.
I hurried back to the main room and closed every door I could along the way. Most days, even in Winter, it didn't get as bad as it could inside here given how thick the walls were, but storms were another matter. Last time Mom kept the hearth going the entire time and we were still shivering by the time it was over.
I briefly contemplated braving the storm outdoors to try and get some more wood from the wood pile, but I ran into an issue. I was still too damn small. I could reach the handle just fine, but shifting the massive fucking door was a no go. I could climb out one of the windows in another room, but I doubted I'd be able to get back in and lug back wood to last us. Besides, it'd likely be soaked and near useless for the fire anyway.
Would you even be able to make it back to Mom if you did go out?
I froze in the middle of closing a door, shuddered, and promptly ignored that fearful voice.
I settled for gathering every single sheet I could from adjacent rooms, and draped them over Mom. I stoked the flames and threw everything left into the hearth and hoped for the best. I hesitated a second, darted to grab the bowl of half-finished rice I'd made for Mom, then wiggled underneath the covers with her, and waited.
The chill wasn't an immediate thing. If anything, it was cozy and I could pretend we were just having a lazy morning. Yet, even with the fire still fueled, it felt oppressive. Bit by bit, the warmth faded. I couldn't tell the time of day here, and didn't dare leave to check a distant window in another room. All I could do was wait and feel as goosebumps slowly formed on my skin as tiny air currents wafted ever colder air in through cracks while the fire and light slowly burned and occasionally cackled with a shifting log. I hugged tighter around one of mom's arms as I pressed my back into her.
For once, I didn't want to move. I just wanted to snuggle closer to Mom, an instinctual feeling I could practically hear saying, "mom will protect, mom will help" but she wasn't. Mom was listless. She wasn't quite cold, but she wasn't quite warm.
I wished she would wake up. I wanted her to wake up. She didn't. I could only wait and hope for the best.
Slowly, the fire faded. I know it was just running low on fuel as time went by, but I felt like it was losing a battle. With every moment the fire dimmed, I felt the cold more viscerally, like it was a skeletal hand reaching out to grip me, sinking deeper and deeper beneath my skin. My tail was furred but it already felt cold, colder than my arms and legs. All of which were under blankets and sheets.
Mom didn't feel remotely warm anymore.
It was just cold. I told myself that. It didn't help. Everything seemed awful. I didn't want to panic, but everything seemed to be getting worse. A little voice in the back of my head kept bringing up the worst case scenarios.
"What if Mom doesn't wake up? What if she's already stopped breathing and you're just pretending she hasn't? What if it's only you all alone on this island? Will anyone ever find you? Maybe an archeologist in a few centuries would find you two huddled and buried in the ruins. Will you just be left as a sad footnote to history, nameless even in a second life?"
I wished the voice in my head would shut up, but he wouldn't. He sounded just like my old self, nothing like my current voice. Pessimistic, realistic, and so fucking certain of the uselessness of trying.
I shivered. This was worse than anything I'd experienced before. Alternatively, maybe it was just Mom not able to help. She always did so much prep and I could do almost nothing. For once, I felt as small as I actually was.
Storms were usually bad and the winds awful, but the speed with which I could feel the air getting colder filled me with oily dread. It was only Autumn. It shouldn't be this bad. You'd think a large, stone structure like the citadel we camped out in would hold in heat. Sure, the insulation had long since rotted, but Mom had done what she could, and the stone was thick. Yet, it felt as if heat poured out of this place like a sieve.
I hugged Mom's arm close, staring at the fading fire with just the tip of my head out of the blankets. Embers shifted and light faded. Even through the sealed room and front door, buried beneath sheets and blankets huddling against Mom's still form, I felt cold creeping in, like skeletal hands sneaking in to snatch warmth from me.
I lingered a while longer and hoped to outlast the cold. But the light faded. The winds grew stronger and shook the entire structure. Distantly, I heard one door slam open, then another, and another as the wind raged through the building. I instantly knew I hadn't secured the locks like Mom would have.
Or maybe it wouldn't have made no difference. I didn't know.
The heavy apartment doors, but it was cold comfort. The fire was back to embers once more.
This was worse than before. Where had this cold even come from? It'd been fine yesterday! I wanted help. Mom couldn't. There was no one else, and I couldn't even rely on myself. I simply couldn't do anything on my own, not like I am.
I tried doing something I hadn't done in a long time, not since I was a child in my old life.
"Please," I prayed, voice barely a whisper. "Anyone. I'll do anything. Don't…don't let us die here. Please."
The omnipresent howling wind outside abruptly stopped as though its vocal chords were cut. My ears rang in the abrupt quiet. I turned sharply towards the door as something in the door shifted with a metallic clang and—
I blinked. I then blinked seven more times for good measure, not quite comprehending where I was or what I was doing. It felt like I'd just woken up but I hadn't been sleeping, had I?
Wait. The cold was gone. Wait, was it ever cold? But then, why was I shivering? Disoriented, I wiggled out of my mom's grasp and looked around. Everything seemed normal. Something flared in the corner of my eye.
A sense of unease shot through me like an avalanche.
The front door was ajar. Small, faintly fading golden tracks of what looked an awful lot like a cat's paws made their way to the improvised bed I'd made for Mom. Except they were huge, easily three times as big if not bigger than my own hands. In seconds they were gone.
I heard a new sound that made my heart jolt.
"Gwen?" Mom's voice, weak but awake, turned me back around. She was halfway to sitting, holding up her weight with one elbow.
"Mama!" With a cry, I dove into her arms and did not fall apart or shed any tears at all. I held onto more of my dignity than that. "Mama, you're okay!"
"Of course I'm okay. The ritual just took a bit more out of me than I expected, that's all," Mom pressed her lips gently to my forehead. They weren't cold anymore. "I'm here for you. It's okay."
Despite her brave face, the strain and faintness in her voice made it obvious how tired she was. I did not cry for too long, or hard enough that I couldn't speak. The right words just didn't come to me right away, so I just let Mom hold me for a while. She didn't stroke my hair or back, and it definitely wasn't super comforting; I was a catgirl, not a cat.
Then our bellies grumbled together, and Mom winced.
"I'm so sorry, kitten, that must have been frightening. Let's go find something to eat."
"Oh," I eloquently said, and then perked up. I'd made rice! It was bad rice, but it would be something to munch on and—
The bowl was foul. If anything, it was a blackened sludge whose smell just now hit me.
That…how long had we been out? It couldn't have gone that bad without me noticing. How long had we been out, I'd just lied down, hadn't I? It was…
I shot up. I remembered. What had just happened? What the flying fuck had happened?
Mom raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong, sweetie, and what's that smell?" she trailed off, seeing the same bowl. She sighed. "Let's get some proper food, sweetie, not… whatever that is."
I felt some embarrassment as she must have assumed I'd somehow made a bowl of sludge.
Eventually, we got moving again. There was a lot I wanted to ask Mom, about what had happened, why she'd collapsed and whatever I'd seen. Yet, something made me hold my tongue. I wasn't even sure it hadn't even been a nightmare.
Yet, as the day wore on through lessons I saw little to no evidence of a storm or even cold of any sort, my unease grew.
It couldn't have been a dream. It felt way too real, and if I dismissed it as one, I might as well dismiss my old life while I'm at it.
Later that night, I set my bowl of rice soup with fishbone stock down. "Mom? I have something to tell you," I began. I paused a long time as her own ears perked up attentatively.
"You fell asleep." I didn't know how to say "fell unconscious" yet.
Mom slowly gulped down her own thinner soup. "That wasn't sleeping, Gwen. It was [geimhreadh]," she said. I tasted the word. "It's like a deep sleep. I was very drained, and I needed rest. More rest than I thought I'd need, sweetie, but, well, normally there's others, and… Well, it was all worth it," she said, reaching out to pat my shoulder.
There were more questions there, but I restrained myself.
"I was scared." I paused, searching for words. Mom was already reaching out to comfort me. Again. I tried to find the word and realized I didn't know it. I knew the English term, but the one for here? I blanked. "I…I asked for help," I finally said.
Mom froze. "Asked for help?" she repeated, with a sudden tension.
"You were asleep so long a storm blew in," I said.
"Storm? How long was I—"
"I was so scared," I raced, voice breaking even more than it usually does. "You weren't waking up and was getting so cold and I tried to raise the fire but it just couldn't keep up and was dying so I asked for help even though no one was there and—"
"Wait, wait, Gwen, did you [pray] for help?" Mom asked me, fear mixed with incredulousness in her tone.
"I think so?" I said, vaguely recognizing the word from an earlier language lesson. She'd taught the word's meaning but little else before moving onto other grammar.
Mom's spoon was shaking. She took a deep breath. "Kitten. I never taught you to pray because there's no one left to answer."
I shuddered violently, finally grasping the significance of what I'd done. My ears lay back.
"Oh, [fuck]," I whispered.
Chapter Eight Author's Note
I'm reminded of a certain meme I saw way back in which someone in a D&D game insulted the moon and Selene later showed up in their dreams to slap them upside the head. Moral of the story to be cautious when offering prayers in a new world. Something might just answer them
Chapter came out somewhat easier than the last one. Chapter was at least partly inspired by the time I was leaving a wedding and saw a number of 5-6 year olds all collectively fail to push back a heavy glass door that was closing that someone forgot to hold for them.
Which leads to my current thought. Being a child in an isekai is unlikely to be particularly easy. Add in a survival situation and it's worse. But as usual, many such stories I've seen usually gloss over vulnerability, whether it's physical or emotional. Hopefully I'm getting that aspect down.
ALSO! First ever story rec. Got contacted from hidingfromyou (which surprisingly is not an alias of mine but is a great name), and they've been posting their own gender bender isekai story called They Call Me Princess Cayce (isekai, becoming a princess, kingdom and military building)!
Read up to chapter 5 so far and gotta say, I'm liking what I'm seeing with how the author is handling a very unfortunate isekai into a medieval fantasy princess's life and all the unfortunate realities of doing so in the middle of a warzone. So yeah, I heartily endorse it.
:3
Obligatory author plugin because I'd love to write more but society sadly says I need monies to keep living:
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