Frostfire Ridge iksuktaktuk

Set for the 9th, vague re: earlier threads.

Kigipigak knew he could only go south. The wind was pulsing in dangerous waves from the north and brought with it the seemingly endless snowfall; it had gotten to the point where travel was ill-advisable even to someone well equipped for it. He could barely see three feet head of his nose. Scents weren't lost exactly, but the turbulent wind got him turned around a few times. Trails were easy to lose.

The wind pushed at him as he marched, and when Kigipigak finally climbed over a small hill it shoved him off the other side, in to a gully that had been inundated with ice. Through this he crunched, found his footing, and fought on. He pulled himself from the depths of snow and shook off, not that it made any difference. Kigipigak's layered coat of white looked looked a lot cleaner, and he blended in with the falling snow all the way along. 

The frozen grass and hard-packed earth gave way to stone, the incline bringing him south along the frosted ridge. He thought he'd found a trail and followed it eagerly, especially as the scent of deer found its way to his nose. Kigipigak tried to keep thoughts of hunger from his mind but it was hard. The path inevitably forked, the scent trail going stale soon after, and he had to make a choice. The far-off hedgerow of trees might afford some protection from the elements and so he prowled that way.

The soil here held a curious heat. Lane scratched against the soil for a few moments and then pressed her cheek against the earth, snuggling down, warming herself against the volcanic convection.  Since she laid down several hours previous, snow had been piling up on her back, enveloping Lane in a protective, frosty igloo. The snow cracked and shifted as she moved beneath it. Buried, she had no way of knowing whether it was light or dark outside, or even if it was still storming. For a few hours the makeshift burrow had been a welcome refuge, but as the gathering snow pressed heavier upon Lane's back, it began to feel claustrophobic. 

The surface of the snow roiled for a few moments, and then Lane's nose emerged. Fresh, frozen air sliced down her nasal passages and throat, banishing all her lingering sleepiness. Another few moments, and her face and ears were free, only to fall victim to the swift, relentless attack of wind and sleet. Lane squinted against the assault, peering at a wolf-shaped outline a stone's throw away from where she layed buried. Despite knowing that it was probably a figment of her imagination conjured from hunger-- or quite possibly hypothermia-- Lane barked at the stranger. She struggled against her frozen tomb once more, freeing her shoulders.

Wait up! Please! Don't leave me...

Sorry for the wait!

The sound of something familiar, bestial, struck his ears. It was difficult to pinpoint where it came from exactly; the wind screamed and anytime Kigipigak pivoted his head to look around he was pelted with snow, struck across the nose by chunks of falling ice. He did not want to stop or reverse his course but he paused long enough to listen, and after a minute or so thought he heard something struggling.

He bellowed, Is someone out there? While his eyes squinted and he looked to and fro for signs of life. He thought he saw something off of his flank and turned to face it, but it turned out to be a sapling bent at an odd angle because of the weather. He grasped this and tugged at it, and it sprang upright for the time being.

Kigipigak turned again, this time to wedge himself against the sapling and partially hide beneath the weighted boughs of an older tree, then called again: If someone is there, call out!

Lane flailed, and the cracks in her snowy tomb deepened. She threw a desperate look over her shoulder, wondering if the apparition would have vanished. Instead, she saw a curious sight: the alabaster wolf taking a moment to free a sapling from its snowy burden. As if he had all the time in the world, and they weren't caught up in a wild, white vortex. 

"Is someone out there?" 

Yes! ME! The yearling strained forward. Surely, if he had time to save a tree, then the stranger would help her too? 

She answered his shout with a stream of terrified barks. There was an eruption of snow as her shoulders popped free, and with a few more wiggles, she had her front paws out as well. She began clawing uselessly against the piles of fluffy snow, trying and failing to find enough purchase against the ground to pull her hips out of the snow.

No answer came, and there was the tumult of the raging wind and heavy snow to then contend with.

Kigipigak could not hear the scrambling of claws against ice; he turned his head and squinted through the blasting winds but had to duck against a particularly violent gust, then flinched and pressed lower as a tree branch came down and swept in to the unknown.

The snow that had piled atop the fallen limb came down in a white sheet that bloomed as it fell, and as Kigipigak raised his head and began to scour the landscape once again, he did not see anything. The ginger-coated wolf was inundated with snow; it fell around her just as it did for Kigipigak, and so he overlooked where she was stuck and moved beyond her by a few lengths.

The apparition began to move away, and Lane's efforts became instantly more frantic. She continued to bark, but the wind ripped her voice away each time, the very moment she opened her mouth. 

The ghost did not turn. Could he not hear her? His silhouette was fading, merging into the harsh and unforgiving backdrop. 

Lane continued to struggle, and with a final, mighty kick, she thrashed herself free. After a brief and ineffectual shake, she peered in the direction of the stranger. He had disappeared.

A small piece of her was convinced that the man hadn't even been real-- the mind did that sometimes, she knew, in an effort to protect the body. Lane's mind had likely played a trick on her, fooling her into digging herself out of what could have very well become her snowy grave. 

Balking at the thought of being all alone once more, Lane charged forward. Almost as soon as she got going, she slammed into something unseen (or something slammed into her?) and the impact knocked her off of her feet. Her shrill bark of pain echoed out.

Thinking he had heard something, then thinking he had been mistaken by the mirage of storming snow around him, Kigipigak got turned around numerous times. The snow was whipping at the ground so quickly that each step felt fresh, the crushed ice beneath his feet transitioning to a path only to be filled again with thick flakes. So it came to pass that he went in circles - retracing his way multiple times and effectively going nowhere.

Until one fortuitous turn. The collision left him briefly winded; he felt his neck tense and his head whiplash, something solid ramming his side at an odd angle. Kigipigak presumed it was a particularly heavy whallop of snow until he saw the variegated coat of the stranger, layered as it was with white from the storm.

Kigipigak was wincing, squinting because of the storm as well as the surprise of the stranger's emergence, trying to catch his breath. There wasn't time for questions; as soon as he had breath he shouted, Come this way! And tried to gather his bearings enough to lead them both to safety.

Jarring as it was, the impact comforted Lane in confirming that the spectral man was, in fact, quite real. She opened her mouth to apologize, and it was immediately filled by a mass of snow blowing down from the treetops. So what actually came out of her mouth was a spluttered, "Fucking hell.."

Thankfully, the man wasn't waiting for Lane to get around to an apology. He ushered her forward, and Lane scrambled to her feet to oblige. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a branch rip away from a tree to the north. "Watch--!" In a split second, the branch was upon them. Luckily, it cleared their heads by a wolfslength or so, but Lane ducked anyway out of reflex. These trees were pretty much just a collection of widowmakers, as far as Lane could tell from her experience as a naturalist. They weren't going to be safe here. 

"South over the ridgeline, then west!" Lane raised her voice, hoping her companion caught enough of her words to understand her suggested course. Once they were over the ridgeline, the mountain would act as a natural barrier against the northern winds. Traveling west would then bring them away from the widowmaker evergreens and toward the boulder field, where they could hopefully find more sturdy shelter. 

Of course, Lane was open to other ideas. The scarred and hardened alabaster man looked like he belonged with the snow and ice-- he probably knew this terrain and this type of weather a whole lot better than she did.

Intent to lead the way to safety, Kigipigak gave the order and plunged through the snow. His path was blasted with a gale of white that obliterated his shape for a time; when he turned to suss out where the girl had gone, he could not see her immediately.

When he did finally catch the sound of her voice warping through the storm it was too late — they had chosen different paths. Covered top-down with a fresh layer of powder as she was, the ginger stranger was obscured; not more-so than himself, but enough so that it took time for Kigipigak to spot her and discern a course of action.

It would be difficult to reconnect with her. She had moved south, he had gone east in his haste, and with a curse falling from his lips that the storm drowned out, Kigipigak fought to find his way to her again.

Lane turned back to the man after making her suggestion, only to discover that he had vanished into the blizzard. 

Had he hear her? Agreed with her? Had he already started south? 

Lane began to move in the direction that she assumed was south-- she was struggling to navigate in this storm-- stopping every few steps to scan for the ivory stranger. Soon the earth beneath her feet began to decline, and Lane concluded that she had reached the ridge. There was still no sign of the other wolf, but then again, it was unlikely she would see him against the wintery backdrop if there was any distance between the pair. 

She would take one last glance around before she tucked herself over the ridgeline and turned west.