Short story segment... 8/4/10

You open your eyes, however you immediately shut them again as you are blinded by the whiteness around you. Slowly, as your eyes grow uccustomed to the light, you begin to realise where you are: you see snow all around you, black silhouettes dancing against the white backdrop: they are trees. You are in a forest, it is winter, but not cold. You inhale, the air is fresh,but you can smell something faint in the air... it's a smell you remember, the smokey smell of food roasting on a fire. You start to tredge through the snow. /crunch/ /crunch/ Your senses are working overtime, picking up on every sound and smell that's carried through the air.
Sudden, you step out of a clearing, onto harder ground, where the the snow makes a dimmer crunch: it is a path, it has been disturbed recently, you know this of course because you see many footprints imprinted in the snow: large, broad ones, medium sized skinny ones and a pair of tiny ones alongside the biggest. You follow this path, the smell in the air to good to resist. Soon you happen across a wood pile placed just off the path, there is an axe embedded in a cut log.

To be continued...