Respite for a Nomad

Respite for a Nomad was a piece of creative writing I created for functional skills; English. My teacher loved my piece of working. Later on I found out I wasn’t supposed to be in functional skills, it was a massive mistake on the college’s part.

Another small factoid was that my mother sent this piece of writing to a friend who’s an English teacher, who graded it an A-Star at a GCSE level.

but enough about me, let’s get onto the story

The sky was a tempered white with the impending threat of succumbing to the cowl of night. The air? Fresh. Winter’s breath has taken its toll upon a dark, deciduous forest. A rampaging blizzard now waiting in the shadows has silenced the once melodic forest with its cold zephyrs welding the mouths of all known creatures shut. Not even a bird’s chitter could break the silence. Only the quiet sound of the thick blanket of snow being torn by a pair of worn, leather boots, held together by flax stitching.

A humanoid figure, clad in several patches of leather from various cattle, cervinae and equine, held together with the same flax stitching to help form a robe. The figure’s gender was ambiguous, their robe covered their figure thoroughly, with a long scarf covering the figure’s head, halting any chances of anyone nearby to assume a gender. But one thing can be told from the figure’s attire, whoever was under that robe and scarf was a nomad. Why was Nomad alone? Why was Nomad here? No one knew, but Nomad was searching for one thing. Shelter.

Nomad struggled to keep its footing in the snow, fearing that tripping could cause a leg to be broken from a rogue stone camouflaged in the white layer, making Nomad an easy pray for the upcoming blizzard. Then the traveller without a home’s eyes saw a small glimmer of hope, hidden between the trees.

It was a rural cabin, made of wood supposedly foraged for this very forest. However Nomad did not know if there was a resident living in the cabin by how the roof has several patches of leather nailed down into it meaning that it has been fixed a few times over its life span, but Nomad also noticed that a glass window was shattered from its frame with several shards still stuck into the frame. Nomad had no choice. Even if the cabin was home to a psychopath who is prepared to defend his territory with machete or musket in hand, or the shelter to a deadly predator ready to sink his teeth into the flesh of an innocent being. No matter what shall be the answer, with the treasure of shelter from the impending blizzard in hand is too hard to give up.

So Nomad performed a mad dash towards the rustic cabin, jumping over several logs and rocks, trying to halt our ambiguous nomad from reaching its desired destination. After several miles of running Nomad reached the cabin. After inspecting the wooden cabin, observing the splintered wood and logs keeping the cabin stable to the ground, Nomad finally found the door poorly made from wooden planks with a handle that shall give your hands many a splinter just from trying to grasp on to it, but luckily just from putting a bit of force onto the door it opened up, giving Nomad an ideal reward for the trials it went through to get here.

As our nameless traveller finally entered the cabin, Nomad saw what the interior had in store for it. The cabin consisted of a single room, there was a wooden table to the left of Nomad with a strange object on top of it. The table was the only thing inside the cabin though, no bed, no chair, only a table. But that didn’t stop Nomad from making this cabin its home, Nomad sat down in the corner beside the table and talk a small wooden case out of his robe, it contained several bits of jerky, nuts and preserved fruit, Nomad began chowing down on a bit of deer jerky and began to notice that outside of the shattered window was snowfall, the blizzard had just begun, yet Nomad was glad he found shelter.

Several hours later, the snowfall went from a mere sprinkling to a curtain bombing of snow, engulfing the forest in a white river. Nomad couldn’t sleep, not only could it hear the noise of the snow pushing down upon the leather, but the fact that the shelter didn’t give Nomad enough warmth. Nomad felt hopeless, yet there was one thing that caught the traveller’s eye, the strange apparatus on the table, Nomad grasped a hold of it and sat down in the corner again. The object was a glass sphere kept up standing on 3 metal rods forming a tripod. Nomad noticed that a thin layer of dust has formed around the sphere and thus began to dust it off, but as Nomad began dusting it noticed a familiar feeling that was nostalgic to it, warmth. Nomad then noticed that a timid flame had formed inside the sphere, emanating warmth from within. So Nomad put down the object on the floor in front of it and began to fall into a deep slumber, Nomad had obtained what it was searching for, a defense against winter’s breath.

By WhaddonCraig

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