...but The Fire Still Burns...

He was stranded out in the deep and desperate cold of nowhere. All he had was a set of rags that used to be clothes and a letter he'd received before the crash. The letter was from the only woman he'd ever professed those three magic words. When he said them the train began to leave the station. In his mind he couldn't be sure if she had heard him, but he told himself it didn't matter.

The letter was still sealed inside the envelope. After the crash he'd promised himself not to open it until he'd been rescued. He thought of this as the fuel to keep his fire burning. In his mind this was all he needed to stay alive. Every time he found doubts of his survival creeping into his mind he would look at the letter. Then he would imagine being moments away from rescue. To be rescued, to survive was the only way for him to become worthy of opening the letter.

After the crash he could find no other survivor. All he could find in the frozen wasteland was a death-scape that offered nothing but the promise of a place for him to join in this grim tableau. His legs would not respond to his will to move, and he had to crawl out of the wreckage. As he crawled away he carried a torch made from the flaming remnants of the plane. Dragging along his elbows and forearms he gathered firewood in the crooks of his arms as he slugged along the snow-stained wasteland.

His body alternated between periods of bitter numbness and horridly frigid pain. The pain came when he stopped to warm himself over a fire. As he felt the agony of warmth he would calm his mind by imagining the letter magically radiating healing energy over him. When he resumed struggling to move forward the numbness would wash back over him. He didn't know which was worse. Three days went by as he struggled to stay warm and slither along this way.

Without food he became too weak to continue moving. He made one last fire, and curled his heap of tortured flesh next to it. As he writhed in pain his hands shook while reaching for the letter inside his rags. It was still dry by some miracle of his efforts. This gave his mind a sense of tragic pride as he stared at the letter with his strained consciousness fading.

As he felt his own death being cast over him like the shadow of a dying sun, a gust of wind rushed past him, stealing the letter from his hands. He watched helplessly as it landed in his still blazing fire; dying to reach-out and save it from the flames. It burned away in only an instant, and he could only stare at the place within the fire where he had last seen it. His lips moved in blue shivers with words escaping in the last breath of fog he could produce. "I can't feel the warmth, but the fire still burns..."

A rescue team spotted the smoke from his fire only moments later. They rushed to try and save him, but it was no use. One of the members of the rescue team noticed his face was marked with a single frozen tear. As she pointed it out to the others they all fell silent, and a long moment passed before any of them would even dare to move. Then one of the others asked how it was possible for this frozen tear to mark its place. With perplexity someone tried to explain how the cold winds had done this. Even after the rational explanation had been given, the failed rescuer murmured softly. "...but the fire still burns..."