Pushing against blizzard with a tired body and dedicated heart, the bird hunter pressed on over the summit. He crouched behind the rock and tied the rope on to the arrow, looked up again, barely spotting the white falcon that could only be seen due the contrasting motion between its steady body and furious snow. Locking one eye on the target, the bird hunter mounted the cross bow on to the rock and peered into its magnifier with the other.
The bird is white, fully and completely white, perfectly and purely bleached, as if this creature is incapable of having a shadow. The only hint that distinguishes it from an ice sculpture would be its dark pupil, not that because it is dark, but because it glitters, the kind of reflection unique to a living organism, an intuitive and primal hallmark of life.
The hunter, however, has not been taken away by its mystical presence. The close up of the bird is just too familiar to him, such an image has engraved into his soul since he gained his first consciousness and memory, on some snowy mountain with a man who lead him to gaze into the exact same telescope that he is using, and the exact glitter of life.
The hunter has steady hands, and not even have the slightest tremble in the cold. The howling wind should not be an issue as long as it stays constant, but random gusts and snow are factors that is impossible to account for. Accuracy in such a weather comes down to instincts and experience, and luck.
After a brief inhale, he blew out everything in his lungs, waiting for the opportune moment to bend his numb index finger.
Seconds prolonged, reality thickens, each flake in the whirl can be seen yet not noticed. It is a certain pattern of flake motion that the hunter is sensing, a que for the recoil of air, a probable moment that the gust suddenly changes direction and collides on its own momentum, creating a comparatively steady breeze for a beat. Such subtle cue can only be caught via immense concentration, which the hunter spent aiming at the white falcon, or intuition, an unconscious reasoning mechanism that is honed over years of practice.
The arrow flew. Through the wind, piercing the snow, straight towards the darkly saturated window of the soul. It missed. The falcon spread its wings and dropped into the wave of blizzard, and yet again disappeared from the sight of the hunter.
There was no indication what made it miss, but it would be meaningless to stress on it anyway. Unlucky, as same as the last hundred attempts, almost as certain as fate. This is not an excuse; the bird hunter had excelled in every aspect of shooting and has tried to improvise every single time. But the fact is that he has nothing more to learn, skill and knowledge only increases the odds of success, but not as determinant as the smile of the goddess of luck.
The bird hunter has to move, to create friction and heat, or else he would be mounting on that rock forever. For now, he has to get off the summit, out of the wind, and prepare for the coming unpredictable night. But the hunter has no fear, as he has learnt to convert it into caution, motivation and determination. In order to live another day, in order to hunt down the white falcon.