Listinia

"Three, two... one."

I let go of the string, sending the arrow flying through the air. It whizzes past the trees and straight into the heart of the dummy.

"Nice one, Ar."

"Thanks, Dal."

"Now my turn." He picks up his bow, aims, and fires. His arrow misses the dummy by a hair.

"Sucks," I say.

"I know," he groans. "It'd be so much better if it wasn't so fucking cold."

"I guess," I say, readjusting my gloves. The insides are lined with soft fur and I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that I killed the creature that provided it. The elders say I should feel nothing. They say I need to be a man who doesn't let his remorse get in the way of his emotions.

"Man, I can't believe we're almost twenty," Dallav says. "Soon we'll be off on our own and..."

"We'll be risking our lives and probably be ending up dead sooner or later," I finish for him. "You know what the elders say. We shouldn't be afraid to admit the truth."

"I know, I know." He frowns and looks down at his weapons. "It's just hard to think of it like that, you know?"

"I guess," I say again. I walk over to the dummy and retrieve my arrow. I try to think warm thoughts, and when I get that hot, almost melting feeling in my stomach, I shoot the arrow into the ground. The snow around it starts melting and it starts to burn. Dallav gathers some sticks and throws them onto the pile. When the fire melts away enough of the snow, I sit down next to the fire and he follows.

"It's weird," he says after a silence.

"What is?"

"I really don't wanna die. But... at the same time, I can't wait to go off into battle."

"Yeah." I focus more on the heat radiating off of the fire than what he's saying.

"I just wanna show them how good I am. I'll show those monsters that ten years of training hasn't been wasted on me."

"I sure hope not." The training hasn't been wasted - no one would let that happen, especially not the elders. But there's only so much you can do with a person's raw talent. He's a perfect example of that.

"Let's go, Arden," Dallav says. "We're not getting anything done here."

We throw a bunch of snow on the fire to suffocate it. When it goes cold, I dig it up and go to pick up the arrow. I come back with a handful of ash and charred wood. Looks like I'll have to train myself more to keep the arrow intact.

Dal points through the trees into a path that is somewhat clear. "We've never gone this way before. You know what the elders say; familiarize yourself with every path."

I don't tell him that they mean out in the real world - not in a safe zone near town. I just go along with him. It can't hurt to train my memory as well as my body.

The air is slightly warmer here since there are fewer trees to shade us. It's a difference so small that I probably wouldn't notice it if I hadn't been trained to detect it. There are some monsters that change the temperature in small increments if you stay too close to them, and then you end up either burning or freezing to death. I was told it's a trick they play on your mind, and immediately I took the class on how to prevent it. There is no way in hell that is happening to me.

Soon the clearing blends back into the woods. Dal walks ahead of me while I watch our backs, just like we were trained to do. However, he stops for some reason and I end up walking into him.

"What?" I say, mildly irritated. The fact that the snow is basically blinding me adds to this.

"Look," he says, pointing to the base of a tree.

There's a large mass at the bottom of the trunk. I have to blink a few times before my eyes start to adjust. Then I can make out blond hair, not unlike Dallav's. And a thin, pale arm buried under the snow.

"A girl," I mutter. There's no way that long hair and thin arm belong to a guy.

"What... what do we do?"

"She can't be alive. There's no way."

"So do we just.... leave her?"

"I don't know. I guess that would be the easiest." We were never really taught what to do with a body. Sure, we learned how to deal with death, but not bodies. Most of the time, there wasn't a body to bring home.

"Seems wrong, though," he says. "Town isn't that far... I bet she has a family back home waiting for her."

I sigh. "Then let's start digging. We have a lot of snow to go through."