The Last Vikings

#FollowYourBliss

I didn't pass out when the snowmobile crashed.

I just lay there, dazed, cold, not even hurting in the snow. I wasn't in a crevasse—I didn't think—but my leg was wedged beneath the overturned vehicle, the pressure on my thigh like a tourniquet, and I couldn't move.

Not that I had anywhere to go.

Even if I could free my legs, I was miles from anywhere. All I could hear was wind. All I could see was snow on blackness. Not even stars.

There was nothing I could do.

The snow-hole I was in protected me from the bitter wind, and beyond my early-onset panic, breathlessly struggling to be freed, I soon settled into hopelessness.

So this was it. My time to die.

Let me tell you something strange. Once I accepted that—that my measly life was finally done—it really wasn't so bad.

It must be one of the best ways to go, freezing. Drowning, burning, even a heart attack—they all sounded so painful.

Freezing didn't. Inexplicable warmth, sleepiness, drifting away... it was a humane, even blissful, release.

And as I lay there, contemplating my own imminent mortality, I suppose I had something like an epiphany.

It didn't matter.

I didn't matter. My death didn't matter.

In the vast, pulsating, energetic flow of life; the dance and hum of the ever-rotting, ever-blossoming world; the dousing of one insignificant little human existence, far out here in the ice, didn't matter at all.

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None of them meant anything at all.

It was time to turn off the noise, the static chatter of my shallow consciousness, and dissipate into everything. There was only me and eternity.

Snow flurried, settling with soft kisses on my face.

And for the first time, I was at one with the universe.

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When my consciousness surprised me by returning, both my connection to the universe and awareness of eternity remained.

I was calm. Peaceful. At one.

With hindsight, that was probably the super strong opiates the doctor had just administered to me for the ruptured tendon in my leg, but it felt real nonetheless.

"Ah, Jennie." Stephen put down One Thousand Leagues and smiled down at me. "How're you feeling?"

Stephen?

If the posh blonde doctor was with me, that meant I was in the research station.

I slowly blinked myself into awareness, confused and amazed that information was finding its way into my senses. I had no idea where I was, or how I had got there.

I was laying in a small, warm bed in a small, white room; somewhere between a ship's cabin and college dorm. Stephen was sitting in a chair beside me. I sank into a kitten-soft grey duvet and pillows, billowy and feather light. It smelled heavenly. Despite it being entirely unfamiliar, I felt completely at home.