Iced [open]

[wandering_giraffe]

The first thing Elin thought when she awoke was "Holy shit it's cold." She struggled to get up, and when she finally got to her feet, she couldn't see anything. Everything hurt, and it was freezing cold. It was pitch black, and she wondered if it was night. It was hard to tell, and it was deathly quiet.
Elin cautiously felt all around her, and was met with hard walls all around her. "I must be in a hole of some sort," she surmised. Elin felt around for her ice pick, hoping it was on the ground somewhere. She found it, a hand closing upon the rough wooden handle of the ice pick. Merely doing that served to ground her some and slow her thought process down. As her eyes adjusted to the blackness, she could see that ice covered the walls, and beautiful, shimmering crystals were covering everything. She threw her ice pick up and into the wall, so that it embedded in the ice, and cautiously climbed up to it and used it as a sort of a handrest. She laboriously and cautiously kept climbing, hoping to come to the surface sooner than later. Halfway up, she reached for a handhold and missed, almost falling down to the bottom and cutting her arm in the process. She sucked in a breath—the frigid cold amplified the pain. Elin ignored the searing pain in her arm as best as she could, and continued climbing up. When she finally emerged from the hole in the ground, she gasped. Directly in front of her were two strange triangular things jutting up out of the ground. In front of them was a field of ice. The sun was sinking over the horizon. The light seemed to multiply as it went through the ice and bounced off the ground (or whatever it was. Behind the triangular pieces of ice—at least she assumed they were ice—was a vast mountain range. Strangely, everything was covered in ice, giving the whole place an eerie feel. The sky was shades of orange, pink and yellow. It was so windy, Elin was having trouble standing, so she half walked, half crawled over to one of the ice giants, and leaned against it—only to hear a strange sort of hum emanating from it. The ice, strangely, was warm without melting in any way.
"This place is getting weirder and weirder," she thought to herself.

Night has fallen. The strange pieces of ice kept Elin warm, but she was hungry and thirsty. She was extremely tired, and it was getting difficult for her to stay awake. Suddenly, she heard a strange sound. It was like a wolf's howl mixed with a screech owl's cry. Chills ran up her spine. There was a pair of red eyes staring at her. As the form got closer, she was able to make out its features. It looked like a wolf, enlarged to the size of a polar bear. It's fur was jet black, while its paws were dark gray. Its' eyes glisten in the moonlight. A low, menacing growl is coming from the wolf. As he bares his razor sharp teeth and lunges for Elin, she ducks. The wolf completely misses her and crashes into the ice, jarring loose some icicles. Elin quickly grabs one of the icicles from the frozen ground. As the wolf gets up, Elin attacks, only serving to make the wolf angrier. The wolf swipes at her with his huge claws, and catches her across the side. Elin falls to the ground, still managing somehow to hold the icicle. Her side felt like it was on fire. The wolf backs up a few steps, and then runs at Elin. She waits until he is almost on top of her, and then stabs the icicle in his neck. The life goes out of the massive wolf's eyes, and he falls. Elin just kind of collapses by the dead wolf, the lack of food and water catching up, and blackness overtaking her vision.

[Sylent Hyll]

Song source: https://vaggvisor.org/gasa-gasa-klinga/

"Gasa, gasa klinga, lan mig dina vingar. Vart ska vi flyga? Till rosende lund."

The words carried on the wind but were quickly drowned; their tune was off-key, but no one would know save the singer. And the singer? To know her by a warm fire was to see her slender form, yet now it was hidden beneath layers of hide and fur. She could not hide her height. Thick boots carried her easily across the frozen snow as the nearly invisible sun high above sunk slowly toward the horizon, the sky shifting from one color to many as the light began to fade.

"Dar bor goken, dar gror loken, dar bygger svalan, dar ar gott att vara."

The cloak concealing her pack whipped this way and that in the wind, as did her hair; she did not have her hood up, for it had grown too warm. Winter had not yet descended upon the world and for one to whom the cold was home, the warmth was only sometimes welcome.

She was almost invisible among the snow and ice, only a little less so as darkness fell. But what the sun illuminated for moments it soon cast into shadow. She rose like a tower above the tundra, and the great black creature trotting beside her was darker still as the light faded. Ice seemed almost to glow and shimmer and shine and sparkle as it broke up the last light of the day, and it seemed to hold it just a little longer as though it could not quite bear to let it go.

Her footfalls stopped, no longer patting down the crystals beneath them, as her ears caught something upon the wind...it was distant, yet her ears were much sharper than those of many of the people of Hyoite. That was far and away across the river, however; there should be none out here save hunters and travelers moving quickly toward that place across the river to the north and east. She heard the howls; she heard the shifting of snow and the breaking of ice. She heard the crying out and the gasping, and she heard the gargled blood and the strangled plea. And then the dire wolf smelled it: blood upon the wind.

She took her bow in her right hand and three arrows in her left as they crouched. One she nocked, the other two she held, and they moved quickly and quietly across the tundra. Up over a hill and around to a break in the frozen ridge they moved, slowing only as the wolf's ears flicked. He could hear it now, too, with ears sharper than those of people but not sharper than her own. It was different than the wind, and now he followed his nose.As the wolf died, a new and perhaps more terrifying shadow loomed above, standing on ice betwixt two jagged pyramids in the darkness. It blotted out the stars as they began to shine and the moon as it stretched its ever-moving eye to rise above them. Its yellow eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, yet its form was obscured. From around one of the pyramids came the hunter, much larger yet crouched to be even smaller than the wolf. Where his eyes shone golden, hers shone silver.

They made no move just yet. They merely watched as the wolf gave its last, shuddering breath. She offered a silent prayer, and the wolf bowed its head. Such was the way of the wilds. Life on the tundra was hard, and survival was not always so easy.

[wandering_giraffe]

Elin was in a lot of pain. She couldn't even tell how bad the wound was. The cold ground felt so good, maybe she could just sleep—-she tried to shake the sleepiness off. No. That was one of the first things she learned as an explorer, was not to give in to the cold. But that was easier said than done, and the ground was so inviting. But then, she could feel it. Someone, or something, was near. Very near. And it wasn't just the wolf she had killed. Something else was out there. She really hoped it wasn't his pack. Her ice pick was luckily close enough to her that if she stretched her arm out, she could reach it. She grabbed it, wincing as she did so (that wolf must have really got her). It was rather difficult to see in the dark but it looked as if there were now two pairs of eyes, one pair silver and one pair gold. Elin held the ice pick as best as she could. She slowly pushed herself up into a sitting position but remained rather hunched over, as that was what felt most comfortable.
"Please, I was just defending myself against this wolf," her voice was quiet and soft, and a little weak.

[Sylent Hyll]

Nature at its wildest: a predator and its prey; yet the prey had proven more difficult than it first seemed. This one was no hunter, and they did not move much after the wolf died. They pled for their life, after a fashion, defending their actions against the wolf as they gazed upon the two sets of eyes staring at them from the darkness. When it was clear that this figure - a woman, by the sound of her voice - would not move again, the hunter put her arrows away. Her dire wolf companion moved out of the woman's line of sight, and a heavy burden suddenly and forcefully rested upon the snow beside her - the hunter's pack.

Away went the bow. Away from her mind went the lullaby as well, a tune she had heard from a time when she could barely form memories, yet one never sung to her. For why would anyone sing a lullaby to her? She was a runt, a half-breed, and not worth the attention. Of course, "runt" didn't apply in comparison to the woman the hunter now squatted beside; even crouched as she was, she towered over her.

The overcoat the woman was wearing was soaked in blood on her side. The hunter didn't say a word as she pulled back the coat and peeled away the cloth beneath it, revealing a freely bleeding wound that had already begun to frost over. She pulled out a waterskin and poured water over it, washing away some of the blood and ice. Before more ice could form, she was already pressing a thick bit of cloth to the wound. Her hands worked quickly, lifting the woman a little without effort as she wrapped the cloth around the woman's midsection. The wrapping was tight but not needlessly so. When she had wrapped it about her a few times, she tied it off just as tightly. Then she pulled the woman's shirt and coat back down, ensuring they covered her. Even damaged and soaked now as they were, they were still warmer than nothing at all.

The hunter lifted her pack away and vanished from view for a moment. It wasn't long before a thick bit of wood was slammed into the snow at an angle, striking deep into the ice below it; then another, its path crossing the first; and then a third, its path crossing those of the first two. Thick logs were placed beneath the tripod of wood. A few moments and a couple of sparks later, the logs beneath the tripod began to burn. The orange-red light grew slowly as more logs were added, and the wolf carcass was pulled away to rest near the fire. The hunter began to work on it at once, field dressing it in silence.

The dire wolf, meanwhile, had reappeared and latched onto the woman's coat. It dragged her into a sitting position near the fire and sat behind her for support. Throughout the whole process, not a word was spoken and not a sound was made. The dire wolf was so large that the firelight barely touched its black fur, and only enough light was yet available to reveal that the hunter was clad in thick, furred hides of her own.

[wandering_giraffe]

Elin stiffened as the hunter made its way over to her. In the dark it was to tell what was alive and what was merely shadows. She thought she had seen two pairs of eyes, but the golden pair was missing now. She gripped her ice pick tighter as the hunter crouched next to her. She weakly flinched as the hunter tended to her wounds, not used to even the appearance of a friendly gesture. Realizing that the hunter meant no harm, she relaxed alittle, her body still tense because of the searing pain shooting up her side. When the hunter finished, Elin mustered a weak "thank you".
The hunter moved away and began doing something to the ground. Elin coughed, feeling a metal taste in her mouth. The hunter had done a good job wrapping her wound. The pain had even lessened some, and as far as Elin could tell through her pain-induced haze, the bleeding had stopped. Her perception of time must have been off, because it felt like she blinked and there was a fire burning, it's wavering light bouncing off the ice. She wanted to get close to the fire and feel the warmth, but she had no strength too.
She felt something grab onto her coat, and, startled, she sluggishly tried to twist around, trying to see what had grabbed her. She couldn't see it, and the combination of the blood loss and the pain made her just give up. Twisting around caused more streaks of pain to shoot up side. The pain felt like a red hot fire that wouldn't go out. She could feel the heat from the fire now, and she was leaning against something large and furry. Her heart felt like it stopped. Whatever it was, it was huge. She was careful not to make any sudden movements, scared to death of whatever was behind her. But it had helped her, so she shouldn't be scared of it. She let go of the ice pick. It wasn't much use to her anyways.
A fit of harsh, hacking coughs wracked Elin, and she weakly tried to hunch over so as not to disturb whatever was behind her. There was a puddle of blood where she had coughed.
She cautiously placed a shaking hand on the wall of fur behind her.
"Thank you, too."