FicWad

It was cold. Not the usual chill of winter, but a cold completely void of life. Everything was covered in thick layers of white snow that trapped the four dark figures trudging through it. It was like quicksand that pulled them down into its frigid depths. It wanted to kill them. No doubt it would, in the end.
They crawled through the blinding glow of ice on hands and knees, fearing they would be blown over and buried forever should they try to stand against the wind. As they climbed over the pale drifts, they wondered why they had left their safety in the first place. They had had shelter, if nothing else.
'We left because we were going to die,' thought the leader as he struggled to find a path through the forest. The others slowly followed him, weighed down by ice and snow and misery. The flurries of white began to pick up and grow in strength. He shivered and thought once again of the small cabin they had previously occupied. But he knew they couldn't go back, even if they wanted to. They were lost.
The wind burned his eyes with cold and made tears form, but they froze to the sides of his face before they hit the ground. He continued on, resisting the urge to blink. He knew his eyes would freeze shut if he did.
"Adam's gone." He stopped and turned around at the sound of the voice. The man walking at what was now the end of the line was facing the other way, standing straight up against the force of the wind. This was foolish, but the leader and his friend could not bring themselves to say anything. Their energy was waning fast.
"Hunter...we have to...keep going," the leader whispered breathlessly. He nearly collapsed into the snow. Hunter shook his head wildly.
"No, we have to find him!"
"If we don't get out of here soon, we'll all be lost," said the third, who had not spoken before now. "Come on, Hunter," he said, also standing against the wind. Hunter did not respond, only staring into the white abyss before him.
"Come on, Hunter!" he shouted against the roar of the wind. There was a sudden, deafening gust that blew snow around all of them, rendering their vision useless. The leader lay face down in the snow, crawling forward a few feet to hide behind a stone for protection. He cried out his friends' names into the wind, but could hear nothing. He reached out to a tree's dead branches with numb fingers, desperately trying to brace himself against the wind, but could not hold on and fell to the weather's mercy. The gust knocked Hunter off his feet, and the ice quickly swallowed him.
The leader shuddered in relief as the wind subsided back to its occasional soft swirls of air and sent white flakes flying into his hair and eyelashes. The world before him seemed to sparkle around the edges of his vision, a contrast to the bleak field of white death he truly saw. It was beautiful.
"Davey..." whispered a strained voice. He looked back and saw his friend lying in the snow nearby. His face was the same shade of the world around them, though his lips were turning blue. He tried to speak, but choked on his words. "H-" He coughed once and inhaled roughly as he tried to say the word. Davey tried to encourage him.
"Hunter-"
His eyes closed. Again the wind snarled angrily, trying to separate them. It succeeded. Davey was blown back against a tree trunk, falling into a deep depression in the snow. It was like landing on a cloud, a cold, completely frozen cloud. His limbs went numb, and a mysterious warmth came over him. He closed his eyes. The exhaustion was beginning to take its toll on him.
Sleep...sleep would be nice, if even for a few minutes. He felt the curious warmth spread and turn into a glorious fire. He was content.