The first thing I learned about alien frost is that it crunches like sugar—loud, crystalline, and entirely unsympathetic toward bare toes.
I pried myself out of the oak hollow at dawn, every joint squeaking louder than the branch barricade. Bronze sunlight lapped over the ridge, warm in colour if not in temperature, gilding the wolf‑prints stamped into the rime outside my door. They circled the tree twice, then veered off toward the river, leaving me a polite note in the snow that read: See you at dinnertime.
"Not if I get a stove running first," I muttered, breath billowing. Fire had become my personal holy grail—minus the golden cup, plus the possibility of hypothermia. Breakfast could wait. Heat came first, or nothing else would.
I followed the prints toward the water, careful to place each foot where a paw had already flattened the frost. The river was still wearing a night-time mist scarf, but the pebble bar on its near bank glimmered with treasure: smooth cedar driftwood, fist‑sized chunks of smoky‑grey chert, and one half‑frozen gourd that looked suspiciously like last night's jackals had been using it as a soccer ball. I washed it, sniffed it, decided it probably wouldn't murder me, and filled it with meltwater. Hydration—check.
The chert, though—that was the jackpot. I tested an edge against my thumb until a bead of blood welled up. Sharp enough. I pocketed two cores and an extra, just in case karma demanded a sacrifice.
Back at the sunny boulder near my oak, I set up a one‑man flint‑knapping seminar starring Professor Desperation. Lesson one: hit rock with rock, try not to remove fingers. Quartz shard became hammerstone; chert became reluctant student. Sparks snapped in miniature fireworks, and razor flakes skittered across the stone like runaway ice chips. By round three I had two serviceable knife blades and a wedge that could pass for a spear tip if you squinted.
Knuckles bleeding? Absolutely. Worth it? Totally.
Next came the bow drill—a contraption I remembered from a Boy Scout demo sandwiched somewhere between knot‑tying and how‑to‑apologise‑to‑a‑fire‑marshal. I scavenged a green sapling for the bow, twisted a vine into cordage, fashioned a cedar spindle, and carved a soft‑pine hearth board. Then I spent five minutes rehearsing motivational speeches for when the thing failed.
It failed. Twice. The spindle squealed like an offended possum, spat a puff of cold dust, and died. On the third attempt I adjusted the notch, slowed my rhythm, and whispered every half‑remembered fire pantheon prayer I'd ever heard, from Hephaestus to the barbecue gods of suburban Perth. Smoke curled. A coal glowed.
My heart thumped so hard I was certain the universe could hear it. I scooped the ember into a nest of shredded bark and moss, cupped it like a newborn star, and breathed. One cautious exhale. Two. Flame bloomed—thin, trembling, defiant.
I fed it cedar slivers until it crackled, then built a teepee of finger‑thick sticks. Heat licked my numb hands, stinging them back to life. I whooped—loud enough to scatter birds and possibly bruise the ego of any jackal within earshot.
Almost immediately the forest sent a welcoming committee. Insects—if you could call coin‑sized stained‑glass drones "insects"—spiralled toward the warmth. Their carapaces refracted light into ribbons of emerald and amethyst that danced across the oak's charred walls. They circled the flames in slow orbits, wings humming like tuned wine glasses. Beautiful—and slightly unnerving. I coaxed two onto a stick, then tapped them gently into an empty bark cup for future study. Portable disco bugs could come in handy.
The fire settled into a steady murmur. I speared my wedge onto a shaft, hardened the tip in the embers, and lashed one of the flint flakes into a makeshift knife. The cedar I'd blackened for a spindle turned into a charcoal stylus; with it I drew three symbols on a strip of birch bark: ☀, ✶, and the split‑oak silhouette. Sun A, Sun B, Home Base. My first field notes. Scratch that—my first diary entry in an entirely new solar system.
By late afternoon the firepit was ringed with heat‑scuffed stones, and the air smelled of woodsmoke rather than impending frostbite. Success had a taste—slightly metallic, very hungry. My stomach growled like an offended koala, reminding me of the berry fiasco. I eyed a clump of the red offenders across the clearing and shook my head.
"Tomorrow," I told the fire, the bugs, and a curious squirrel‑thing peeking from a branch, "we catalogue cuisine. Ideally the non‑lethal kind."
I banked the embers, tucked a glowing coal into a bark tube lined with ash—instant travel‑sized heater—and retreated into the oak hollow. The air inside was warmer now, scented with cedar smoke and possibility. Hunger gnawed, but hope burned hotter.
One resource down. Dozens to go. And somewhere beyond the treeline, the galaxy's hungriest predators were still reading my frozen footprints like a snack map.
Let them come. I had fire, flint, and more stubbornness than sense. Survival, round three, was officially underway.