**Concavenator**:

The smoky yellow lights of the inn floated up in the darkness, together with the smell of penguin flocks and fried meat. White pools of guano, vitrified by the cold, crunched underfoot.

The two travellers entered the inn one last time, enjoying the last offer of heat by something that could be called civilization. Few people were fully awake; many of the construction workers had withdrawn inside for a hot bark tea, and were half-slumbering. The two clambered up the ladder to Kukri's room, which was just about to expire. This time, there was no need to pay a stranger to help her carry her baggage, at least.

**pinkgothic**:

As they left the unpleasant scene behind, Kukri's tiredness caught up with her. It took the fresh distance to realise how tense the situation had made her. Nonetheless, sleep was not a luxury she wanted to indulge in before they were out of immediate visual range of the settlement. She gauged that she could manage that far, at least.

The greater risk was that her slightly soured mood might leak out and contaminate her interactions with Giya. Some effort could smooth it over for a while, but she doubted it would last all the way to where they might set up camp.

She allowed herself an only partially stifled yawn, then began to collect her gear, gesturing to Giya as to what to carry. She tried to do this quickly - dressed as she was, she was likely to overheat while carrying provisions if she continued to do so inside.

**Concavenator**:

The winter torpor, of course, called for its due, and willpower could do only so much against nature; but trudging through barren ground, feathers rippling in the wind and nostrils smoking in the frost, that too was the nature of 'ikrakind. So Kukri steeled herself, and hoped that Giya could do the same with her fanciful beliefs, if she could not do so with natural philosophy.

The heat of the room was a cruel temptation, but the embrace of the rolled coats, the burden of the lamps and the bags of canned food, and the noise of the rifle's barrel banging against every surface made it just uncomfortable enough to leave it with little regret. Together they clambered down the stairs, just as the innkeeper left her own quarters, most likely to inform Kukri that her hospitality had just run dry. Seeing the two guests bringing down all their baggage, she quietly returned to her rest.

The inn's door flung open, and the icy air once more stabbed at them through every tear in the coat. In that moment as never before Kukri felt the need to drop everything she carried, pay for one more night of rest, and then return to Grikaa.

**pinkgothic**:

But it would, of course, be a supreme failure. Her standing was not good enough to weather such a blow. //Weather//. Weather was indeed their problem. She snorted stubbornly into the cold air, quite against her own desires, and started on her journey with Giya in proverbial tow.

Mercifully, the winds weren't too bad at this very moment. They could get worse, that much was clear from the season alone, and depending on where they were in the landscape they might have very little shielding from it, but there was no use worrying about it. They //would//, however, have to pay attention to the slopes in the landscape as not to let the winds sweep them downhill in a moment's misplaced footfall.

At least the direction of the wind was entirely predictable. //Down// was always obviously highlighted by gravity.

"Is your load a comfortable carry for you?" Kukri asked, distracting herself from her own mild 'no', aware she should endure the current setup for hours without ill effect to her body.

**Concavenator**:

"Yes, Kukri" answered Giya. Would she have dared to say otherwise? In any case, she probably had endured worse at more tender an age.

They were not yet out of the range of civilization: here the snow was still broken and trampled, sullied by all sorts of waste, though not as thickly as in Yakak'ratu streets. Under the slush lay the beaten paths that led to nearby villages. But farther away they could see the snow lay flat and undisturbed, dark blue in the dim starlight. Farther than that, pinpricks of light that might have been waking hamlets, or the stars themselves mirrored in frozen lakes. Farther still, the looming mountains, a jagged black edge darker than the night sky, as if bitten out of it, striped with gleaming glaciers.

With some luck, they could expect to make fifteen or twenty leagues per day, which would have meant three or four days to reach the edge of the ice, and as many to come back. Yet 'Au'a knew how rare it was for such plans to be fulfilled without pain.

**pinkgothic**:

If they were not yet entirely honest with each other now, they would be two days into their march at the very latest, united against the bitter wilds that would try to stop them and might yet succeed in their indifference.

"Thank you, again, for offering your assistance," Kukri remarked. It was only right that they carry their dignity and civilisation with them -- even if Giya's experience with those concepts was necessarily much smaller than Kukri's.

Hopefully, her experience with the wilds was proportionally larger.

"Should I lead us in a direction you think is unwise," Kukri said. "I ask that you tell me immediately." A better plan would be to let Giya lead, of course - and indeed Kukri intended to allow her to do just that, but not today, and likely not until another day had come and gone.

**Concavenator**:

"Yes, Kukri", Giya said again. It crossed Kuri's mind that Giya might be unwilling to contradict her employer even if they should be in danger, perhaps until the situation should be beyond recovery. Kukri quickly regretted this thought, but still -- how to make sure that wasn't the case?

She was growing accustomed to the cold. The frost that had bloomed on the tip of her feathers had ceased to grow, and her walking pace had become regular, escaping her conscious perception. How much more terrible would this walk be, had nature given the 'ikra slender proportions and a bare skin!

After some time, over the hiss of the wind, Giya spoke on her own. "The wind, I think, gets stronger. If it gets much stronger from there", and she gestured at the mountains in front of them, "we must stop and we lie down, and we must cover our faces. That wind hurts the eyes and the mouth, and it can make blind".

**pinkgothic**:

That, then, was a good sign that Giya would not remain silent until the situation was beyond repair. Kukri privately breathed a sigh of relief before squinting forward, as though watching the mountain would grant an adequate impression of the progression of the wind. But the clouds were falling down its edges now gave no indication how they would fall an hour from now.

"We'll be prepared, then," Kukri promised. "And pause as the wind demands." A pause, then: "Thank you."

**Concavenator**:

After that, it seemed to Kukri -- or was it suggestion? -- that the sound of the wind was indeed growing stronger, that the hiss had been replaced by a howl, a bellow, a babble; that gibbering voices were calling from the mists. Outlaws taunting travellers that were not worth robbing, the rough breath of prowling theropods, shamans and warlocks cursing the strangers that trespassed on holy ground, or the ghosts and demons from Giya's beliefs entrancing unbelievers to draw them to a freezing doom.

She steeled herself, commanding her ears to realize that this chaos of sounds was to be expected from wind alone. //Cold air is heavier than warm air, cube palm per cube palm; masses of air from the polar mountaintops sink into the warmer lowlands, creating cold wind that blows outward.// Even Giya did not look disturbed by voices or unusual sounds. In fact, she seemed far less miserable than back in Yakak'ratu.

The guide walked with her head folded own, splitting the wind with the back of her head, letting only less biting air trickle onto her face. The coarse feathers on her neck rippled in surprisingly ordered waves, and those on her tail were somehow almost motionless. Her boots slipped out of the mounting snow as if it had been water. Her arms were carefully folded, with her fingers safe behind her head, moving seldom, only to scrape away the frost that was blooming on her nostrils and eyelids.

**pinkgothic**:

Kukri adopted the tricks quickly, though out of necessity occasionally looked ahead to regain her bearings and to find her strange guide amongst the battered landscape. The path was still fairly straight-forward where they were now, making it almost unnecessary, but it was a good habit to build later, when the environment became more inhospitable.

The provisions and gear they were carrying afforded some protection from the wind as well, at cost of being more weight that needed stemming against it.

It was not a //pleasant// camping trip, but it was a necessary one, of that Kukri reminded herself repeatedly. What they were doing might not be glorious by any measure, but their data would be valuable, if they managed to gather it.

**Concavenator**:

Giya had folded into apparent motionless, having ceased even to breathe (or was the wind simply dissipating the vapor from her nostrils before it could condense and freeze?) Kukri had heard of traveling ascetics or shamans of the deepest south who could will their body into winter torpor, or an even deeper slumber, withdrawing all heat from their surface and limb and concentrating into their kernel, where it could not be lost to the freezing wind. That would allow them to live through the most savage cold, at the risk of being buried by snow or devoured by roving predators as they lay unconscious. That Kukri scarcely believed, but what Giya was doing resembled it much.

The mountains were hazy now, shrouded in wind-blown snow, and their breath had grown into an unbearable screech. People lived here. People worked here. How could they? How could anyone? What was 'Au'a thinking, when She made this place?

**pinkgothic**:

They couldn't afford to remain in one place for very long, but there was indeed only so much that could be done in the present weather. Kukri could only do her best to mimic Giya's methods and shift the miscellany she had brought with her to form at least a partial barrier to the biting wind.

In theory they could set up camp and properly shield themselves, but it depended on how long the weather would hold as to whether it made any sense to do so.

"Should we set up camp?" Kukri called across to Giya, the wind wiping away the fine traces of scepticism that her voice held. Her body, at least, was ready for rest, and had no objections to her own hesitant suggestion.

**Concavenator**:

Her companion's response came back barely audible at all, almost drowned by the avalanche of air. "-- up -- south -- over but -- again --"

It took quite several repetitions, each incompletely erased in different ways by turbulence, to piece together the message. //Yes, let us put up a wall facing south; the wind will soon be over, but it may come again.// That horrid wind, if nothing else, was predictable in one thing: it would always breathe from the south, when masses of cold air sank and rolled down the glaciers.

The two travellers still had to wait to be allowed movement. The sheer idea of being heated by exertion, in that air, in that snow, and squandering one's heat to the polar field... Kukri did not dare to move until Giya's did, when the wind relented somewhat. Raise a wall, presumably of piled snow, and huddle behind it. The researcher was quick to regret that the only shovel they had was fit only to dig small samples of soil.

**pinkgothic**:

Once the weather allowed, the wind still proved unkind to early attempts of stacking their gear into a provisionary wall, knocking it over like a petulant deity several times before Kukri got the angles right for some temporary and minor reprieve. The shovel would have to do to help them in their quest, inadequate though it might be.

Between stones and cargo and snow, a short wall gradually formed that was worth hiding behind.

**Concavenator**:

As if to mock them, there was little wind after the makeshift wall was done. Kukri lit the alcohol lamp and passed the flame near the layer of snow that was mounting on its southern face, melting it here and there so that it would reconsolidate into a screen of solid ice. Then she extinguished the flame and, along with Giya, lay near the lamp's hot casing. She briefly smelled burned feathers, but she would not be bothered by an excess of heat. For a while, her muzzle buried into a fold of her coat, she drifted into and out of consciousness for a while.

**pinkgothic**:

Kukri alternated between fragments of sleep and awareness of the wind, comparatively mild as it had become.

It was tempting to stay here for a significant while and catch the rest she'd denied herself earlier, but as much as they'd erected a barrier to protect themselves, it only served as a temporary solution. For proper rest, they would have to find a wind-protected crevice and set up the crude tents she'd brought along.

What dreams might she have here, amongst the snow and cutting blizzards? She pictured dreams of white death. She dreamt of the same in tiny slivers whenever her consciousness faded. In her dreams, the ice was alive, reaching for them slowly. In her dreams, the wind growled.

With a start, Kukri realised she wasn't asleep.

She'd never heard the sound before, but she couldn't attribute it to the weather. She went through what Giya had told her, but there was no scent leaking from their impromptu encampment. She nudged Giya, but otherwise remained still and silent, keeping her low profile, working her mind on a plan in case a wild animal thought to attack them.

**Concavenator**:

It was a deep, intermittent rumble, that travelled more through the ground than through air. She would have interpreted as distant thunder, had it not seemed to come from underneath. A tremor of the rocks that protruded through the snow, where they'd been bared by the voyagers' frantic digging; an earthquake? Were the polar fields so cursed a land; were they not spared any misfortune? But Kukri had studied in depth the geology of this region; the Thunder Mountains were old and well set, glaciers being the only change they had witnessed in a million generations. An avalanche? Or --

She heard it more distinctly, and this time Giya rose to attention as well. The rumble grew into a growl, and the growl into a sharp bellow, at semi-regular intervals. It was unquestionably an organic sound, carried through the air, and the sound of something large. Something moving, and moving not far, as its voice, for this must have been a voice, came from a different direction. And it seemed that, to this voice, something else, farther away, responded.

A new sort of chill crawled all over Kukri's skin, and she cursed silently. //Merciful 'Au'a, You would not allow this.// For a few heartbeats -- she would think later that her she must have been too dazed to think lucidly -- she believed that one of Giya's demons was hunting them. But no, this must be a wild animal indeed, one of the terrible beasts of the polar lands.

**pinkgothic**:

The good news was that whichever creature was making the noise was in fact making itself heard. That meant it wasn't hunting - it was either defending its territory toward another of its kind or searching for a mate. But in either case, they were in peril if they got in the way.

Kukri strained to make out the directions of the two sounds, assess whether it was better for them to stay put or move - and, if the latter, in which direction, how quickly.

**Concavenator**:

The rifle was unlikely to help against a large theropod, which could easily be three or four paces tall and thrice as long; let alone more than one. An extreme resort could be to collapse the wall, and bury themselves underneath. But how long could they resist so, and how long would they need to? Perhaps start a fire? But all the alcohol in the stove and in the bottles -- and consuming it all at once was mad -- would have produced little fire in absence of solid fuel.

Other ideas followed in Kukri's mind, each worse and less helpful than the previous, and each quicker as the sound grew nearer, until her thoughts were a useless jumble, and her hands shivered violently over the baggage.

Giya looked calmer; perhaps she had expected this to happen since the beginning. In her experience, Merciful 'Au'a must have allowed far worse things. She stared deep into the hazy darkness, perhaps having already triangulated the source of the nearest voice. Why did she say nothing? Did she want to meet this fate, was this enterprise no more to her than an elaborate suicide? And yet, Kukri could see, though her throat would pass no sound, that Giya's posture was tightening, and her muscles were tensing under the coat.

**pinkgothic**:

The best plan perhaps was to sit tight and ready oneself for flight. Making too much of a fuss was just as likely to attract attention as it was to help them.

Kukri considered it a good idea to keep a nervous eye on their provisions - if they did have to bolt, grabbing as many as was reasonable was the best they could likely do under the circumstances.

If their current position was directly attracting the attention of a predator, they wouldn't have many provisions left if they abandoned them, turning the entire expedition into a failure. A failure she might have prevented with marginal foresight, even. And so she applied the foresight, which didn't put the slightest dent into her private terror.

Silently, she brought a few of them to Giya's specific attention, trying to communicate wordlessly 'if we run, you grab that; if we run, I grab this' in as few gestures as possible. They could leave several things here and return for it later, but any food left behind likely had to be considered lost.

**Concavenator**:

Giya followed all of Kukri's gestures, nodded politely; and then whispered: "No".

She stared fixedly into the pale murk in the east, from which the bestial voice was coming (having moved there from the north, which meant the thing was close enough to be circling around them). There must have been outrage in Kukri's posture, as Giya followed: "If run, run light. No things. Now still." That curtness was more than her imperfect grasp of formal Chaatai; she was minimizing her words, apparently still hoping to avoid detection. While sitting on supplies?

**pinkgothic**:

This was perhaps the downside of travelling with someone who was used to having nothing. Kukri was approximately provided for - if she blew this expedition, that would change. But how did one make it clear to someone like Giya? It wasn't like they could have a respectful debate about it. In fact, Kukri was considerably less willing to make mouth noises than her guide, a fact which grated against her fear to sour her mood toward her companion.

The heavy things were tents, blankets and bottles, all of which she would abandon at the drop of a hat - they had little use to a wild predator, other than trace smells that would turn up nothing of great interest.

But food like the cured and dried meats were some of the lightest things they were lugging through the wasteland. Kukri fully intended to take what she could manage to seize in a split second's motion (and, with her already being primed for the exact gesture needed, it should hardly take longer), whether Giya liked it or not.

**Concavenator**:

Did Giya suspect as much? Her pupil shifted a few degrees toward her companion, and she whispered: "Not hunting, maybe not hungry... One won't hunt while other's close. Won't think of food. Still, still. We run after, when say. If far, if far, take things."

Of course. //A poke of predator flesh must be sustained by several pokes of prey flesh, and so on down to plants; the smaller the plant life, the more numerous the steps, and exponentially broader is the base needed; a polar //yachakri// could weigh half a -- half a burden, and require perhaps a thousand times that in plants; the average distance, in this sparse environment --//

Kukri's thoughts shattered like a wave against a cliff. Yellow eyes had blazed into existence in the dark haze, staring down from a height greater than any living thing should have. //Three paces tall, no more --// The thing looked at her, and she saw it rush forward, and she felt burning knives rend her body and scatter it to the wind. But no, it stepped not directly toward them but in slightly askew a direction, still looking forward, focused, thank Merciful 'Au'a, on something else.

It was in front of them, and a voice came from behind.

**pinkgothic**:

The urge to run before Giya said so was very nearly overwhelming, but in that Kukri had never particularly wavered - if she wasn't going to trust her guide to keep them alive, there was little reason to consider her a guide at all, rather than a sentient beast of burden. And while the sharing of burden had been the reason Kukri had sought Giya out, she //had// decided to treat her as a guide, and she was not going back on the decision now.

Her concern for the food had remained, even past all the rationalisations. If the creatures were going to meet near their current haphazard camp, even if it was for mating, free food was free food. It didn't smell very strongly, but she trusted the predators here to have a keen sense for making out even trace scents.

But as the creature appeared, the carefully planned motions were gone and it was all Kukri could do to stay frozen still, primed to run.

**Concavenator**:

The //yachakri// stood at no more than fifty paces away, its feather coat glaring white like frostbite, nostrils smoking in the turbulent air. It thrust its head forward and hissed, a venomous sound, like water running over burning coals. It hissed and spat at the darkness, at the hidden voice that had offended it by trespassing on its domain, or by failing to protect one.

And there the second //yachakri// congealed out of the air, right behind Giya and Kukri, who, flattened on the ground, bit a bag to prevent herself from turning around. The two beasts paced against each other, around each other, now silent, except for the crunch of snow under their bulk, and the flow of air through their poderous lungs.

Concentrated on each other as if the rest of the universe had crumbled away, they walked back and forth, left and right, each trying to press the other into turning away. For an undefinable time they did so; and when the snow was sufficiently trampled, and the air sufficiently warmed, they lunged at each other. If they'd been powered by springs and clockwork, their attacks could not have been faster, nor more simultaneous.

They bit and rammed, never deep enough to threaten each other's life; they locked jaws and pushed with their chests, tendons and muscles swelling enough to deform the thick plumage, cursing each other with gurgling bellows. They whipped their head away from the locks, their necks straining beyond belief, and returned to pacing around each other, their mouths agape, vomiting funnels of vapor.

There was no acknowledgment from them that anything else existed.

**pinkgothic**:

If she had been of sound and clear mind in that moment, Kukri would have marvelled at the display -- it was almost surely true that Giya and her were witness to something that no one had ever witnessed to such exquisit detail. And while there was a good chance she would vividly remember enough of it to take note of it later, //keeping record// was an impossible luxury, far out of scope of what her adrenaline-eroded cognition was capable of thinking about.

Thankfully, her limbs were sufficiently close to cramping that even her instincts thought it unwise to leap into a run without another prompt. Her wide eyes tracked what they could given the inopportune angle of her head, witness to vast swerving tails and shuddering feathers as vast swaths of flesh collided.

Whether it was truth or fancy, she was convinced that if either of these creatures as much as fell on them, it might fatally crush their bones.

**Concavenator**:

After endless seconds, the lunges became somewhat slower, the hisses somewhat quieter. Black streaks of ground had been bared in the snow, and the face of the beasts was pink with smeared blood.

Then one of the two surged forward and seized its rival by the neck, apparently finding little resistance, and dragged the both of them down. The //yachakri// writhed in the broken snow, growling, kicking at the air, whipping the ground with their mighty tails. The beasts met rarely in the polar waste, and it seemed to Kukri that the fight, having proven the might of both while breaking neither out of this land, had turned into a monstrous coupling.

Giya turned to Kukri, pointed to somewhere in the southern darkness, and whispered: "This way. Take things. Run now".

**pinkgothic**:

The mentally-practised motions from before were back with a surge of clarity. She seized what she'd picked out, sprang up as though stung and bounded into the direction Giya had gestured toward, her full attention on every movement, acutely aware of every larger blemish in the ice in a manner that even her best concentration during moments of clearer thought could never have rivalled. Certainly not while running.

**Concavenator**:

The wind was stirring once again -- or was it air pushed around by the two enormous bodies? Having surprisingly managed to gather all supplies, the two travellers leapt out of their hiding place, running around the ice fence that stood in their way, and then out into the further south. The Moon peeked now and then through wounds in the clouds; at that, the haze and the snow reflected the light into each other, turning the whole landscape into a pale, liquid fog. Not the best in which to hide, particularly with the dark coat of all 'ikra, but they were soon out of reach.

The beastly sounds could no longer be heard; the sound of their boots sinking through the crusted snow was now enough to cover them. There was no way to say in which direction the //yachakri// would have gone afterward; certainly two opposite ones, but even so the odds of meeting either again were low.

//Not as low as those of meeting one in the first place, let alone two.// Although it was a blessing that two predators had stumbled on their shelter at the same time, as one alone would not have been so helpfully loud.

They walked forth, with little hope of taking sleep again. Hopefully in a few hours they would be able to take shelter among rocks. The mountains were still far, and the air so cold.

**pinkgothic**:

Kukri had not expected them to be as successful in rescuing their supplies as they had been, but eventually the adrenaline from the encounter ran low and she noticed she was paying the price for the constant tension of those moments, joints aching from more than just the cold.

Her mind was slow and sluggish from the aftermath of the stress, but clung to one insight: She would have to draw these beasts and report on them as best she could. She held on to the mental images as though there were any risk of her forgetting them, as if they had not already been etched into her soul.

It was not a good time to stop and rest, that much she knew. It was better to keep walking for a little while, slowly but surely, and rest by gentling herself in those motions, not by sleeping. There was no telling what sleep would do while she was in this immediate post-adrenal state.

Far too easily, she could picture herself settling down in a place where the snow and ice would simply consume her in her sleep.

**Concavenator**:

Giya strode with little visible effort through the snow, now ankle-high, the great sediment slope that had drifted from the mountains year after year. She did not seem too shaken by the recent event, and even as it transpired she had kept a cool mind. Was this a common occurrence in this place? The common wisdom of Grikaa charged the people of the far south with a preternatural resistance in face of the worst hardships, though opinion was divided on whether such resistance was innate or a matured over a lifetime of exposure. In this particular moment, Kukri did not believe she could ever grow accustomed to a night like this.

Then her companion -- her guide, really -- said: "If we reach the rocks of the mountains, yachakri don't hunt on rocks".

**pinkgothic**:

Kukri muttered some form of assent. She wanted to pick Giya's brain on the yachakri, find out more about what she knew of them, preserve that information -- but not now. Unlike Giya, Kukri's gait was less accustomed to the snow, and while she did not quite //struggle// forward, she did lag behind increasingly, if only slightly.

But there was one thing she could say and mean it: "Thank you for your help."

**Concavenator**:

To that, Giya responded by quickly muttering something in her dialect, then paused for a few heartbeats, turning to look back at Kukri, and said: "I want to say-- is my duty". Finally she turned her head again to the field of rock in their front, slowing down her pace, as if contemplating the vast graveyard of stone that lay in front of them.

The glaciers started to appear in the mist, heavy and swollen and unnaturally white. At that alien sight, Kukri briefly wondered what, exactly, she had just thanked Giya for, and whether the absurd events around their icy wall had not been just a frightful dream. She shook her head, feeling her brain almost as numb as her fingers. She could not let a low temperature take away her faculties of reasoning and observation, could she? What power could a mass of water claim over her, just by virtue of being in the solid state?

The wind was not even at its worst. There were places in the Polar Fields, on the other side of the mountains, where the ground had been stripped bare of all snow, naked black ground shivering under starlight, and the air was so dry that not the smallest trace of frost could form. One could be there and believe that the world was still a young egg of bare rock floating around a budding Sun, any form of life being a strange dream of the far future; if not for the corpses of mummified seabirds strewn here and there, wherever blind storm-winds had tossed them.

So, they went forward.

**pinkgothic**:

Something about the glaciers made them look like large, slumbering oceanic beasts, white bodies streamlined and smooth but for the scars of ancient battles.

The adrenaline was fading, making way for a sense of awe simultaneously eroded and intensified by the her deep exhaustion. They would have to set up camp soon and rest, whether she wanted to or not. They couldn't continue walking indefinitely, no matter how much the glaciers erased all feeling for the distances they still had to cross.

"Let's look for a safe spot to set up camp," Kukri suggested.

**Concavenator**:

"Yes, let's," Giya agreed, "when on the rocks". This much exertion as this hour of the year was as unnatural as a behavior could be while still being physically possible; every part of the body of the two travellers protested against it, from stinging eyes to aching toes down to the hereditary corpuscles screaming deep within their tissues. //We did not travel through your ancestors a thousand thousand times for you to throw us away into the waste.//

Soon the crunch underfoot changed its pitch; like reefs uncovered by a falling tide, crests of stone arose out of the snow, dark granites of incalculable age, worn smooth by the wind. The polar breath had sculpted them into towering walls and carved into them deep canals, flooded by snow. Many had narrow openings that could easily be closed by piling ice blocks or fixing a strong canvas, saving the trouble of raising two walls out of four.

**pinkgothic**:

It was the kindest gesture the harsh environment would ever offer them. This was a desert of ice and stone, providing at most shelter, and in discovering the relative gentleness of the eerie landscape they were entering, Kukri felt a sense of terror knot in her chest.

She knew it was mostly her exhaustion causing it, the ache in her bones, the lingering emotional effect of their earlier encounter with the yachakri, the extreme solitude as they were choosing to rest, not any rational concern for her own safety - for they had come well prepared - but that made it no less compelling.

Even Giya in her extreme poverty in some sense was used to being embedded in a civilisation that would help provide for her. For Kukri, the effect was stronger still. But they were perfectly isolated here, far from any support, in a place where nature would give them none.

Kukri fervently hoped that sleep would let her catch her mind before it spiralled into madness.

**Concavenator**:

Soon the gaps were filled, north and south, and the canvas was thrown above in the manner of a roof, keeping the howl of air out for once. By their own hands, as if they were the last survivors of a vast catastrophe that left the rest of Tagra still and silent. Which they might well have been, far as they were from any communication with the wider world. (Poorly suited, of course, to repopulate it; but Kukri would not have appointed herself matriarch of 'ikrakind even with the best possible mate.)

Slowly Kukri's mind sank back into sleep, though yellow eyes and hissing bellows took form in the smoke of her thoughts, and made her jolt and twitch in her bed. The canvas flapped in the wind above, but with a soft and steady rhythm that seemed to promise it would not break free. That much, at least, was comfort. Giya's breath suggested she was at peace, perhaps already sleeping; 'Au'a knew what sort of life was one in which that day's experience was an unremarkable one.