Just Chilling

We sat together, huddled against the daggers of the wind and the blinding snow. We'd been travelling for days in search of home; even if it were a new home we would be happy. The storm had closed in on us as we fished by the coast. A flurry of white flakes; pure and bright like stars and just as cold. We swept around to see nothing. No sense of direction, we had lost the stars, the moon, the shore, home. We had sailed in the direction we thought meant shore. We navigated so slowly it hurt. The icebergs haunted us, looming slowly, like ghosts. We shouldn't have been fishing then. Winter is upon us, the ice floes follow us in flocks whenever we approach sea after chipping the boat free from its icy moorings. But we must, we have meagre food rations preserved for the winter, it was best to hunt for more now than starve later. Or so it seemed.

We are on the shore, where we landed to search during the short hours of daylight. They become shorter frighteningly quickly. We are on an unfamiliar stretch of coast, which doesn't really matter as we can see only a few inches in front of our faces while the blizzard blows. There are five of us; there were seven when we set off fishing. Eirik lost his life to the sea, he was swept off like a leaf onto a pond. A living leaf. And a pond of liquid nitrogen. Lars also died to the cold. He ate little, slept less and drifted in peace to a different darkness from the one we travel through.

As we travel the icy cold follows us, there is little fuel for fire and we must ration it. Our vessel travels through the water like a knife through a curtain, feeling every snag of resistant fibre but travelling nevertheless. We must hurry, Jakobson is weak. On the land the flakes rushed and leaped at his heels. At sea the wind wails a promise in his ears, the waves whisper sweet nothings, like the lover's last kiss. On his pale lips; a prayer.