It was a wonderful frosty weather in the forest. Night. Silence.

Alastor walked quietly through the snowdrifts, holding a hunting rifle on his shoulder, looking around, listening to the quiet whistling of the wind in the forest, the crunching of snow, the rare cries of animals.

Sometimes it was so nice to go hunting on weekends. No extraneous sounds. Just you, nature and the night. you and your thoughts.

He looked down in surprise, looking at the bloody trail in the snow and staggering footsteps, wondering if he should go, considering that half an hour ago, he had heard a distant shot.

He didn't have far to go home. It was only twenty minutes to the hunting lodge and from there, in the morning, he would calmly return to his house, so, loading his gun, he followed the bloody trail that wound through the trees, ending abruptly at the ravine. But there is a new sound. The sound of wheezing, broken breathing and the crunching of snow and branches.

It wasn't an animal. Human. A person clinging with bluish fingers to the lower branches of a fir tree, trying to stand up...

"Don't move!"

He asked, jumping down into the ravine after him, clinging to the branches with his hand, getting out from the other side.

"I won't hurt you, but... What are you doing here?"