For sisterofdream
Number Eleven - Whimsy/Reality
It’s pride and hubris that leads to it. Fraser has grown up in the Northwest Territories, after all. He knows the hundreds of different creaking sounds that ice makes, knows how to read them like the books in his grandparent’s library. So it’s pure hubris that sends him out over the spit of ice that stretches out into Prince Rupert Sound.
He should have listened to the ice and stuck to the shore, never mind that it would have meant trailing behind the poachers with little hope of catching them. He should have paid attention when his sled team balked at setting foot on the ice, leaving him to run across it on his own.
The ominous, shearing creeaak isn’t, therefore, unexpected. Neither is the staccato-gunshot sounds of a large amount of ice abruptly fracturing and falling into the water. Fraser thinks that he hears a bark, but that thought and all his others are driven from his head like the breath is driven from his body as the water closes over him with a crash and begins to squeeze.
Cold doesn’t even begin to describe it. There don’t exist the words to describe the freezing-burning daggers that immediately assault his face and then, half a second later as his clothing soaks through, the whole of the rest of his body. Even though all his training-all his knowledge of accident procedure-are crying at him not to, Fraser can’t help but lose what little breath he has in a stream of rippling bubbles.
As fast as the cold has severed all of his voluntary nerves, preventing him from producing any kind of useful movement, it’s also shutting down his mind, so that all the emotion he can muster about his impending death is a detached apathy.
Something crashes into the water directly over his head. It kicks and flails at the side of his skull and then something has hold of a hank of his hair, half pulling it out as it yanks him to the surface. Fraser breaks through into the air and there’s something there, right in front of him, snapping and snarling. He reflexively takes a breath, then takes another as the thing clamps onto his right shoulder with strong jaws, awakening a sharp pain in his shoulder.
Fraser welcomes the pain, it washes back some of his consciousness. Enough to let him kick feebly, attempt to swim as his savior drags both of them to the shore and up onto the bank.
Even though he shouldn’t, Fraser can feel himself beginning to fall asleep, a combination of shock and hypothermia. He forces his eyes open and coughs at a sudden weight on his chest. He finds himself looking up at the long, streamlined nose of something that is at least half-wolf. After a long, long moment he recognizes it as the young husky cross that has been trailing after him ever since he rescued it from the mine.
It licks him, warm and wet, on one cheek and arranges itself next to him. Creaking sounds of snow announce the cautious approach of his sled team. Fraser lolls his head to one side and muzzily watches as they individually exchange tentative sniffs with his savior and then curl up around him.
Fraser lays on the snow, feels the body heat of the canines around him beginning to thaw his body enough that he’ll be able to move, to set up his camp, to live, and he stares up at the endless cloud-scribbled blue of the sky.
It’s pride and hubris that leads to it. Fraser has grown up in the Northwest Territories, after all. He knows the hundreds of different creaking sounds that ice makes, knows how to read them like the books in his grandparent’s library. So it’s pure hubris that sends him out over the spit of ice that stretches out into Prince Rupert Sound.
He should have listened to the ice and stuck to the shore, never mind that it would have meant trailing behind the poachers with little hope of catching them. He should have paid attention when his sled team balked at setting foot on the ice, leaving him to run across it on his own.
The ominous, shearing creeaak isn’t, therefore, unexpected. Neither is the staccato-gunshot sounds of a large amount of ice abruptly fracturing and falling into the water. Fraser thinks that he hears a bark, but that thought and all his others are driven from his head like the breath is driven from his body as the water closes over him with a crash and begins to squeeze.
Cold doesn’t even begin to describe it. There don’t exist the words to describe the freezing-burning daggers that immediately assault his face and then, half a second later as his clothing soaks through, the whole of the rest of his body. Even though all his training-all his knowledge of accident procedure-are crying at him not to, Fraser can’t help but lose what little breath he has in a stream of rippling bubbles.
As fast as the cold has severed all of his voluntary nerves, preventing him from producing any kind of useful movement, it’s also shutting down his mind, so that all the emotion he can muster about his impending death is a detached apathy.
Something crashes into the water directly over his head. It kicks and flails at the side of his skull and then something has hold of a hank of his hair, half pulling it out as it yanks him to the surface. Fraser breaks through into the air and there’s something there, right in front of him, snapping and snarling. He reflexively takes a breath, then takes another as the thing clamps onto his right shoulder with strong jaws, awakening a sharp pain in his shoulder.
Fraser welcomes the pain, it washes back some of his consciousness. Enough to let him kick feebly, attempt to swim as his savior drags both of them to the shore and up onto the bank.
Even though he shouldn’t, Fraser can feel himself beginning to fall asleep, a combination of shock and hypothermia. He forces his eyes open and coughs at a sudden weight on his chest. He finds himself looking up at the long, streamlined nose of something that is at least half-wolf. After a long, long moment he recognizes it as the young husky cross that has been trailing after him ever since he rescued it from the mine.
It licks him, warm and wet, on one cheek and arranges itself next to him. Creaking sounds of snow announce the cautious approach of his sled team. Fraser lolls his head to one side and muzzily watches as they individually exchange tentative sniffs with his savior and then curl up around him.
Fraser lays on the snow, feels the body heat of the canines around him beginning to thaw his body enough that he’ll be able to move, to set up his camp, to live, and he stares up at the endless cloud-scribbled blue of the sky.