sunset melting gold

In early summer, there was some light rain in front of the villa.

The water from the melting ice dripped down, wet the dry firewood under the eaves.

Fang Shiqiu was wrapped in a thin blanket and guarded the weakly lit fireplace, and the dumb girl sat opposite him, throwing the split firewood into the fireplace.

The dry firewood protected the weak flame and rekindled the extinguished flame, and the iron kettle clamped on the fireplace was bubbling.

The dumb girl made a cup of cold medicine with boiling hot water, stuffed it into Fang Shiqiu's hand, and limped out of the room again.

She carried the firewood soaked in snow and leaned against the fireplace to dry it. The steaming mist dispersed in the hot air, blurring Fang Shiqiu's vision.

The thermostat of the villa suddenly stopped working late at night in late spring. Without any warning, the temperature in the room dropped by dozens of degrees overnight.

In order to save energy, Fang Shiqiu slept with the dumb girl in the room on the second floor.

The temperature dropped suddenly, and there was not enough charcoal in the room. The two who woke up from the cold could only wrap themselves in the same blanket and hug each other in front of the fireplace to keep warm.

"Cuckoo-"

The hooting of owls echoed among the pines.

The snow-capped mountains are dark at night, but more active than during the day.

There were rustling sounds from under the window sill where the wild pheasants once rested, and the scattered footsteps were mixed with heavy panting sounds, as if something was walking through the snow in groups.

Fang Shiqiu was close to the mute girl's warm body, and he still dared not close his eyes.

Those unknown creatures had gone away, but as soon as he closed his eyes, the sound of them walking would ring in his ears.

Fang Shiqiu stayed up all night and stayed up until the next morning with his eyes wide open.

As soon as the gray sky in the distance lit up, the dumb girl who was snuggling beside him stood up and went to the courtyard on the first floor with a small ax for self-defense.

She lingered in the snowy backyard for a while, maybe only a few minutes, but Fang Shiqiu felt that she had been gone for a long time, so long that he began to worry about whether something bad happened to her.

Fortunately, the dumb girl returned to the room safely with a pile of firewood in her hands.

She lit the firewood, wrote on the floor with charcoal that was charred, and told Fang Shiqiu that the thermostat of the villa was destroyed by wild animals that went out for food at night.

Fang Shiqiu asked: "Can it be repaired?"

The dumb girl replied to him on the ground: It can't be repaired.

Fang Shiqiu let out an "oh" in frustration, and said, "Forget it, it doesn't matter."

The mute girl looked at his lowered eyes, paused her writing hand, and continued writing on the ground: It should be a wolf.

There has never been a pack of wolves in the snow-capped mountains before, and there are only a few scattered raptors at most. The appearance of wolves means that their living environment is more dangerous, which is not a good sign.

"I know."

Fang Shiqiu gently took the charcoal from the mute girl's hand, threw it into the fireplace behind him, and wiped the black ash from his fingertips on the thin blanket.

"It's ok."

There are too many desperate things, it doesn't matter whether it is a wolf or not.

They're going to die anyway, and that's okay.

The thermostat stopped working, and the firewood brought back from the backyard quickly burned out. The dumb girl went to the pine forest to collect firewood, and when she came back, her fingers and ankles were red from the snow.

Fearing that she would get frostbite, Fang Shiqiu took out the changed sheets from the cabinet, tore them into rags and wrapped them around her hands and feet.

He had never bandaged someone before, and his movements were unfamiliar. The cloth strips were repeatedly wrapped in the same place, and soon wrapped the dumb girl's hands and feet into ugly zongzi.

The dumb girl looked at her completely immobile hands, silently unwrapped the cloth strips, and wrapped them around her fingers again.

"Yes... sorry, I'm not very good at it."

Fang Shiqiu apologized stumblingly.

The mute girl hid the end of the cloth into her palm and shook her head slightly.

The summer in the snow-capped mountains was slightly warmer than the spring. There was no heating, and the two of them survived for another half a month relying on the firewood they picked up to keep warm.

Fang Shiqiu ate very little, and most of the time he relied on nutritional supplements to sustain his life. The medicines and food in stock in the villa were still decreasing at a speed visible to the naked eye, and he might not even survive the fall.

The mute girl once went out to look for food, but was caught in a small avalanche and almost died in the wilderness.

The snow mountain is too high and the pine forest is too vast. Back then, Fang Shiqiu was healthy and fashionable and could only walk to the edge of the pine forest. Now dragging his dilapidated body, he couldn't get out of this villa at all.

Everything outside the villa is unknown, avalanches, wild animals, rocky beaches...any trace of danger may kill them.

This year, many animals that had never been seen appeared in the snow-capped mountains. On the night of the full moon in early summer, there were intermittent wolves howling outside the pine forest.

Fang Shiqiu was awakened from his sleep. He leaned against the dumb girl and carefully grabbed her skirt.

"Don't leave me."

Listening to the howling of wolves in the distance, the mute girl broke Fang Shiqiu's hand and wrote "Yes" in his palm.

The wolves frequently moved in the pine forest, and the dumb girl no longer went out.

She blocked the door of the room with discarded furniture, and kept the ax and knife for self-defense within easy reach.

The furniture on the first floor and other rooms was torn apart by her, cotton and cloth were patched and mended to barely make warm clothes, and the wooden frame was split by a small ax and turned into a warm fire in the fireplace.

The dumb girl stayed by Fang Shiqiu's side, but Fang Shiqiu left the room time and time again, walked down the stairs with the help of the stairs, and wandered under the monitor on the first floor.

He tried to irritate Liang Ming behind the monitor, looking forward to the other party's appearance, and even prayed to the non-existent gods, humbly wishing to be beaten and tortured by Liang Ming.

Fang Shiqiu desperately hoped that Liang Ming would appear.

Rather than being buried in a desolate snow mountain, he hoped that Liang Ming had not abandoned them.

No one heard Fang Shiqiu's prayer.

The unknown helicopter circled over the pine forest many times, as if searching for something, stayed for a while and then hurriedly shifted, completely ignoring the villa hidden in the pine forest.

Liang Ming did not appear here, and Fang Shiqiu's wish did not come true.

The helicopter left again, and Fang Shiqiu sat down next to the fireplace.

The skin on his shoulders and arms was dry, cracked and peeling, the backs of his scalded hands had blisters of various sizes, and his exposed calves and insteps were covered with chilblains.

The wound festered and bled under the environment of sharp temperature fluctuations. Fang Shiqiu started to have a fever, and hallucinations appeared repeatedly in front of his eyes.

The black charcoal shackled in the fireplace gave birth to butterflies again, and those bright blue elves flapped their wings, swayed their long and curly tentacles, jumped over the grate of the fireplace, fluttered and fluttered in the dancing firelight.

Behind those fluttering butterflies, there is a large piece of warm light.

Fang Shiqiu wanted to grab them, so he reached out to the burning fireplace.

The scorching flames scorched through his fingertips, sweeping away the moisture between the skin and texture. If the dumb woman hadn't held Fang Shiqiu down in time, his hand would have been scorched into charcoal by the flames.

The fire in the hearth dwindled as the wood was consumed, and the butterflies turned to ashes on the charcoal.

Fang Shiqiu didn't grab them, and his curled up body suddenly became extremely hot.

He tore off the blanket on his body, shivering in the cold, and his clothes were soaked in cold sweat.

The dumb girl picked up the blanket on the ground and put it on Fang Shiqiu, but he struggled away.

She staggered back two steps, the wounds on her fingers and calf opened again, and the oozing blood stained the yellowed cloth.

The blood was spreading, and Fang Shiqiu froze in place.

He stretched out his hand tremblingly, trying to cover the bleeding wound on the dumb woman's hand, but was thrown away.

The dumb girl pushed Fang Shiqiu to the ground and tied her up with a blanket.

Fang Shiqiu fell to the ground, hot tears streaming down from the end of his eyes, and the shadow of fangs and claws on the ceiling slowly melted into the moist bubbles.

"What to do... what to do..."

"I don't want to die yet..."

Fang Shiqiu was crying, his gray face was covered with mottled marks, and intermittent sobs stuck in his throat, turning into desperate wailings.

The dumb girl let go and patted his chest lightly.