The first thing I feel is the cold, after that it's the word for the feeling: cold, freezing, chilly... words pop into my mind like a contest, each vying for my attention, each trying to be louder than the others. After the sudden flood of words comes my first thought, who am I? Where am I? Where's Tenebrae? Wait, who's Tenebrae? The thoughts slowly fade as I lay still, unsure of myself. Not sure what else to do, I start with the first question: Who am I?

Kala.

That's who I am, I'm Kala, but what else is there to me? What do I like, who do I know, do I know anyone? I'm drawing a blank, and all that comes from that is more questions, so I go back to the original list.

Question 2: Where am I?

How do I answer that? All I know about where I am now is that it's cold, and wetness is slowly seeping through my clothes to my skin. Suddenly the darkness that floods my vision is gone, and light shines so brightly I roll over; squashing my face into the freezing, wet earth. Wait, there's a better word for this than earth... it's, it's... snow! This cold, white stuff is snow! Ok, so I'm Kala, I'm in the snow, and I'm trying to find something or someone called Tenebrae, but I don't even know what that is... Sitting up, I look around. The snow seems endless, like a plain, so I turn, curious to see what I’ll find.
At first, it’s nothing. Nothing but more snow, more white, more endless plain. The vague line of change separates the sky from the snow like a gate or a wall, the two never touch, only press hard against the barrier that keeps them apart. Were things always this way? Or were the sky and the snow once together as one, touching and flowing as a single being? Oh, all these thoughts are so confusing, a lifetime of questions poured into a span of only minutes. Why can’t I remember the lifetime I’ve had to ponder these questions? Where did it all go, did it just fly away like a bird leaving for warmer... Ugh, these questions are getting so complicated, why do I keep describing things so carefully? I know everything, I know about words and what the animals do, but I can’t remember anything
This is so backwards and confusing, but how do I know that it’s not this way for everyone? What is this voice inside my head that knows how everything works, without having the slightest idea how I work? Then again, it seems like I only remember things that are useless. Why do I care what birds and squirrels do when it gets cold? Why do I speak in my head, but cannot seem to make a noise leave my lips? Why can’t I remember anything useful, like who I am, or at least who or what this Tenebrae thing is? Why does my mind block what seems most important only to allow what is useless? Great, more questions, that’s the last thing I need when the ones in my head are already so confusing!
Let’s start over. I’m Kala, I’m in the snow, I can’t remember anything useful, but something called Tenebrae is important to me, I need or want this thing for some reason I can’t remember. Ok, let’s think of another question that isn’t weird and confusing... What am I going to do now?
Maybe I should start with getting up. I move my hands to the snow behind me, and I stretch my legs in and out a few times. They seem sturdy enough, so I stand, carefully, testing each joint before I put my weight onto it. I’m a little wavery, swaying from side to side like I’m in a storm, but, thankfully, I stay up. Now I’ll try turning in a circle, maybe I’ll get a better view like that. I take one wobbly step to the side, barely managing to stay up for the moment all my weight shifts to my left foot. Placing my right foot down again, I follow with the left. Several more times I do this with only more endless snow and sky before me, but finally, on my fourth rotation, I see something different.
I’m not sure what they are at first, they’re tall, with thinner pieces splitting off the centre, and more splitting off of them. They are large and dark, and they look like scars against the pale, snowy sky. Then the word comes to me: tree.
Trees! Trees, they’re all over the snow, some on their sides, some upright, but they don’t surround me, they stay to the small space before me, a dark edge to the endless white. I wonder what’s in those trees, what hides behind their dark trunks? I have more questions now, and the old ones are flooding forward again; answer me, answer me!
Kala, snow, trees, Tenebrae. That’s all I need, that’s enough.
Let’s try walking now, I need to get out of the cold, find something warm, though what that something might be is nothing but open space in my mind, I grasp at it, clinging to the concept of warmth. I must walk to find the warm thing dancing at the edge of my thoughts. Using it to keep myself up, I lift my foot and set it down, following with the other. I’m shaky, I’m slow, but I’m moving. I’m heading towards the trees and I can’t help but long to touch the tall things.
Will they be rough or soft, hard or squishy? Squishy, that’s a funny word, squishy... I jump at the strange noise that suddenly fills the air, piercing the silence I hadn’t registered before. It was nothing strange to me, it was all I’d ever known, at least, I thought so, but what about everything I can’t remember, maybe the noises are locked up in there? The noise I heard was odd and high-pitched; it repeated itself a bit, but not perfectly. I’d felt warm when the noise had come, but now I was scared. What on earth had made such a noise?
Then it came again, and I realized my chest tightened with each noise. It was me! I was making that strange noise! I was laughing! Wait, laughing, is that what that noise is? The name fits it well, but I can’t place why it fits so well. This world is so confusing. I’d been walking while I was thinking, and it had come back like I’d been walking all my life, as I likely had. I reach out, and press my palm into one of the trees and slowly drag it down the trunk. It hurts a little, so I stop pushing so hard and it turns to a comforting roughness rather than a painful one. I’ll have to try not to push so hard next time I touch something.
Reaching my other hand out, my fingertips graze the closest tree on that side, but I can barely reach it, so the sensation is muted. Walking on, my bare feet are starting to hurt, the snow is so cold. I need to get my feet away from the cold, some vague memory tells me being too cold is bad, and I don’t like the feeling anyway. I look down at myself for the first time, and I’m not sure what to think at first.
Covering my body is a white dress of sorts. It goes all the way down my arms, long pieces dangling loose at my wrists. Flowing down my ankles, it barely escapes the wetness below. My feet are bright red, and the palm of my right hand is a little scraped from that first tree, but the rest of me is actually pretty warm, even the parts where snow had soaked through the dress were oddly dry, which gave me an idea. Reaching down to the bottom hem, I carefully ripped two large pieces from the dress. The inside was lined with a fuzzy something, which seemed to be what was keeping me warm.
I carefully wrapped each foot with the material, and the relief is instantaneous. The warmth envelopes my feet, and they feel dryer than they should, having only just left the snow. As I tie the second one into place, something brown and stringy falls across my vision on both sides. I brush it out of the way, but it only falls back. I tie off the material and reach for the stuff again. I follow it to its beginning, only to discover it’s me. The entire top of my head is covered in the stuff, and it’s barely a moment before I know what to call the stuff. Hair.
Not caring to much about what it’s for, I ripped a thin strip from the dress, and used it to tie the stuff away from my face, which helps a good bit more than I’d thought it would. The sticky warmth on the back of my neck is exposed to the air now, which is much better than the awful feeling of wetness. It was odd for it to be warm in such cool weather, but the dress seemed to keep me at a certain temperature, which at the moment was too warm for my liking. At least my feet were warm, which was more than I had expected when I’d wrapped them up.
This world was so strange, so many things didn’t make sense. There was so much out there, so much I hadn’t discovered yet, I was sure of that. There must be something out there that was important, or this complicated world wouldn’t be here, right? Why was this all so confusing? Surely someone out there could answer all my questions, perhaps this Tenebrae was that someone, a person from my past who knew everything about me. The sooner I found him... her... it, everything would be better. But how do you find something when you don’t know what it is?