Bleak Mountains
He jerked up from his sleep, franticly rubbing his face and arms as if to get rid of something. But he did not remember what he dreamt. Slowly his eyes adjusted to the world around him, a small clearing surrounded by pine trees and wild shrubbery reached out into the clearing. The smell of a fresh stew reached him, and he saw his friend crouching beside a small fire with a small iron pot. They looked at each other and smiled. Together they enjoyed breakfast, his friend passed him a cup of nettle tea. Yet they said little. Both knew what they had to get done today. He looked up above the pines towards the looming mountains that surrounded them, their peaks not white but black and bleak. As they stepped back into the forest the light seemed to go out, even though it was just morning it was a perpetual twilight in the forest, and as soon as the two of them entered his friend started talking about the unnaturalness of it all, they have seen no animal for days, even the insects we...