Night 1

'Uh what the hell. My head it's pounding. God, it hurts.'

Solstice lays there flat on his stomach and is met with an incredibly painful headache.

'Make it stop.' Solstice tries lifting his hands off to massage his temples but realizes he has very little control of his body as if no matter how much he told it to move it wouldn't obey. It felt like he was paralyzed. 

As he was trying to regain control of his body one thing hit him.

The cold.

Or rather the lack of it. Not even a moment ago he was freezing but even that would be an understatement he felt as though he could die at any moment and now all of a sudden that cold was gone and it was replaced by heat. As he was trying to make sense of everything a previous sound that sounded like buzzing started getting increasingly louder.

They were voices and they were getting louder. Nothing insane but just enough to make what previously sounded like a buzz now a whisper.

They were saying Solstice's name along with another one. Essance. It's like there were 2 voices inside of Solstice's head playing tug of war to see who could be louder and that they did each voice was getting increasingly louder to the point Solstice wasn't able to hear his surroundings. As a matter of fact he wasn't able to make sense of anything. 

It's like the only thing that Solstice could make sense of was the voices echoing in his head but even then he was starting to lose his mind.

The more and more the voices spoke and got louder the more blurry Solstice's mind would become. With the headache and voices. Solstice was reaching a state of madness. He could feel his body getting increasingly hotter. He slowly felt like he was losing his sense of self.

He had to do something. 

He didn't know what he could do but it's as if something was subconsciously telling him that he had to remain conscious that he had to fight the madness. And so he did. He tried by regaining control of his body. By doing a trick he heard of to fight off sleep paralysis. He was trying to wiggle his finger tips and he tried this for 5 minutes to no avail but he was on a timer because as time flowed he was becoming more and more insane and so he thought of memories.

He thought of his past memories. Trivial ones, depressing ones, important ones, he understood that he was slowly losing his sense of self and the only way to regain it was to remember who he was through his experiences. And so he did but with the voices getting louder it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to remember anything. Until he found one.

He was 6. It was his first day of elementary school and was the first time he was away from his mom. He remembers sitting by the door and refusing to move and just crying the whole time for his mom to come get him. Looking back he feels really bad for the teachers who had to deal with him. 'I'm sorry.'

This was just one of many he remembered birthdays, funerals, tests everything was slowly coming back to him but as he was remembering more and more the uncomfortable feeling of something being in his mind other than himself was plaguing him more and more and although he didn't want to admit it. 

Some of the memories that were going through his head weren't his. The other name was echoing through his head. 

Essence.

This name was also being said in his memories. As if memories that weren't his were trying to materialize and were trying to find space in his head. 

And the more he tried to remember his memories the more these other memories would creep in. Until eventually he saw one. 

He saw the memory. It wasn't like anything he'd imagined before. It felt almost like a dream except it was more realistic. He was fully conscious as to what was happening around him and he was physically seeing it. He was standing in front of a couple of logs with an axe in his hand and was chopping wood. A majority of the wood he was cutting looked to already be chopped as if he was cutting fragments from a larger tree. And the background was snowy, everywhere he saw had a grey color to it. From what he could tell the snow was so thick to the point it was covering a majority of sunlight. As for the area, it was mountainous; it looked like the village he was in was completely surrounded by mountains and giant trees. There was a single path that was clear and seemed to be somewhere where a carriage would come through. As he scanned around more he realized there were more paths only this time they lead directly into the forest. If you could even call it that. 

Every single tree looked like it could be a skyscraper. While one of the reasons that the sky was grey and barely any sunlight was able to come in was in fact because of the snow another blaring reason was the trees. They were covering the sun. They were so large in fact that he couldn't see the top because the clouds were covering them. This made Solstice assume that the boy whose memory he just saw. That his village was in a mountain otherwise the trees would have to be impossibly big. Too big to the point where they quite literally made no sense logically. 

As Solstice was trying to gather more information from his surroundings the memory he was viewing was slowly fading out and transitioning into another memory. This one of a boy in front of a fireplace warming himself up after coming back from outside. As he sits there he hears a muffled voice call out the boy's name. "Essence!" Startled, the boy looks back and responds with a surprised "Yes?" Solstice now hearing the voice a lot more clearly realizes that it's the voice of a woman and has a worried tone to it. "Come eat before the food gets cold, you haven't eaten anything yet." And almost immediately the boy responds with a "I'll be there in a bit let me just warm myself up." The woman still sounding worried responds with an "Alright just make sure you hurry I don't want you eating cold soup." He could feel a smile forming on the boy's face. "Yeah don't worry I'll go right now mom." 

As the boy was finishing his sentence when he said mom the memory started to fade into black. Although this time Solstice didn't get another memory. As a matter of fact there wasn't anything anymore. The voices he was hearing were gone and the pain he felt both from his head and body were now completely gone. It felt as though there was nothing he didn't feel. It felt as though he was in an abyss and he liked this feeling. 

The abyss was comforting. Here he didn't have to worry about pain, he didn't have to worry about his future, he didn't have to worry about his family. Family? Family! 'I need to get back home to mom.'

All of a sudden Solstice was overcome with a feeling of both dread and panic. He had to get back home. He couldn't just stay here and so he tried breaking out of whatever trance his feelings of panic and dread were getting increasingly more and more intense until it felt like something cracked.

And just like that the daze he was seemingly in was cut. He was back in his body only this time there were no voices. His head still hurt only this time it felt like a fever headache rather than a drill being dug into his skull. 

As for the heat he didn't feel anything. Although his body did feel a little sensitive. He could feel the clothes he had on rub against his body and could feel the wind brush against his skin but there was no cold. No matter how much he thought about it he wasn't able to feel cold. 

Which was impossible because it was still very much snowing. 

The more he thought about it the more worried he got and he started getting a knot sensation in his throat. 'Could it be that I have irreversible nerve damage… or maybe I'm on the verge of getting frostbite?' As he tried to come to a conclusion he was getting more and more worried to the point where he felt cold sweat go down his body. 

Cold sweat? Although it was more of a mental thing if anything the cold sweat showed that he could still at least feel and then he tried pinching himself really hard one to see if he was in a dream and two to see if he could in fact feel pain.

He could in fact feel pain.

With a giant bruise on his arm he started examining himself to see if he had any wounds on himself but since there was practically no light he wasn't able to see and so he wasn't entirely sure. But based on feeling alone he could assume he was probably fine.

After making sure that he was in fact fine and wasn't in any severe danger. He'd finally calmed down.

Until he realized something that he hadn't felt before. He was being watched. He wasn't sure why he was feeling this way but It was an incredibly overwhelming feeling to the point he thought whatever was right behind him. But when he looked around.

He saw there was no one. As a matter of fact not only did he see anything as in any form of their being life he also didn't hear anything, the forest was completely silent and the only two things that could be heard was the sound of him breathing and the wind brushing up against the leaves. 

Solstice felt disgusted and was becoming increasingly uncomfortable as though he could throw up at any moment. He was sure that there was some kind of predator stalking him but he couldn't see nor hear anything but to him it felt as if someone was breathing down his neck analyzing every single one of his moves. Then the full situation dawned on him.

He was completely unfamiliar with his environment and he knew he'd just be a sitting duck but it's not like he could just get up and start wandering he'd be in an even more dangerous situation. 

There was nothing else he could do. He knew he had to at least find light and so he got up and started his journey to get to a clearing. Somewhere where there would be light and hopefully a river.

As he was walking around the forest he realized there really was no life or any sign of life. There were no plants. Not even ferns, there were no footprints, and there was no feces; it's like everything in the forest had been wiped out aside from the giant trees.

And that feeling never went away.

There was someone or something.

He was sure of it. He had never felt this kind of feeling before and was a sort of gut reaction but with every step Solstice took he became more and more miserable like he was getting physically dragged down. 

The presence was so overwhelming and negative. Solstice had been so occupied with the feeling that he hadn't realized he'd crash straight into a tree? Solstice felt around. He just assumed it was a tree because he wasn't able to see properly. The fact that there was no light was making it increasingly difficult to navigate the forest but it was almost as if though something was guiding him it felt like he wasn't just wandering but rather he was going to a set location. 

That feeling quickly went away when he realized he'd crashed into something. 'That's odd.' Subconsciously he'd brace for impact as he thought he'd crashed into a hard cold surface but… whatever he'd crashed into was soft he started rubbing it to get a better feel. 

It felt like…fur? 

He tried getting a better look at it from what very little light there was and he saw it was a white fur coat with what looked to be black spots on it and he both felt and saw the coat move in a rhythm.

Whatever he had crashed into was now turning around. 

It looked at him.

He hadn't crashed into a tree. He couldn't have been more wrong he crashed into what looked like…

A bear?