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Concavenator:
It was not a cheerful morning, nor would one come for a long time. But it was morning, and that was cause for celebration enough. All the windows of the inn were boarded and bound with half-rotten rope, and the bitter wind outside made them clatter savagely. Indeed, only the last vestiges of winter torpor would allow any 'ikra to sleep in that building and retain her sanity. Still, a faint bluish light blew in from the north when the cracks and fissures happened to align.
Kukri Taigra-Daagru crouched on the moist floorboards, her tail feathers slowly sweeping the cold grit behind her, her aching eyes fixed on the papers of her Poleward journey. The engravings of the Thunder Mountains were frightening: fangs and claws of stone sliding out of icy gums to bite the sky and tear at the clouds. The flickering, feeble light of the tallow candle made them look all the hungrier; the very idea of such a place existing, out there in the invincible winter night, was hateful. Kukri could only hope that the engraver had let her fancy exceed reality, or at least that sunlight would make those peaks and ridges gentler.
A sound could be heard from outside, above the clattering window boards and the babble of the sleepers. This inn just outside Yakak'ratu, the last before the ground rose up as the fearful mountains, was surprisingly well-stocked with travelers and peddlers. Some were clearly active outside already, trying to exploit the few minutes of sunlight, propping up the stands for the coming spring festival.
Sleep would not come for Kukri. She should keep revising her papers, perhaps try to recruit some fellow guest into her mission; but the air inside was damp and moldy and reeking of rendered fat and penguin soup. She longed to take a few steps outside, if the bitter wind allowed it.
pinkgothic:
Kukri would have to wait for the winds to ease. Her mission was one of science, not of heroism, although she might not wholly wish to deny a certain overlap between the notions. Regardless, it was wise not to be reckless about it. This was as far as the ice would yet come and she would have to go before the dawning spring made it recede, but it did not necessitate starting her journey in this weather. There were many days still of the ice simply being where she needed it to be.
The greatest risk was to die in a blizzard. The second greatest was of falling to her death between the yawning cracks of ice or stone. In that, the depictions she was staring at in her mild insomnia were quite adequate - these mountains would kill her if she didn't approach them with care. It was good she didn't intend to journey far; others had drawn these maps at their own peril, and while there were no doubt ghastly inaccuracies hidden in details that might yet prove dangerous to her, she was not the cartographer meant to circumscribe the mountain range.
That, at least, was a blessing.
No matter her stubbornness, she felt some regret at her choices. This was as far from any warming down as she was likely to get. Comfort was something she would at best find once her mission was complete, far from here, in a direction she wasn't about to embark on.
But the work was important.
So was sleep. She lay her head on her forepaws and closed her eyes, trying for it once more, knowing full well it wouldn't work. Her patience for the attempt evaporated a minute into the fruitless ritual; instead, she rose tiredly, letting her restless energy take her to the door, as she considered finding one of locals and ask them for their weather report of the coming days - as though it was at all likely to have changed from what she had last heard. In any case, at this point, she could either stare at the map in apprehension or challenge herself a little in a weather she was bound to encounter on her journey. Latter might at least exhaust her and grant her some easy sleep.
Concavenator:
Outside, the cold was harsh, but not unendurable. The damnable dampness of the inn had soaked Kurkri's black feathers and was now blooming into frost, which she hurriedly scraped off. The wind came as an avalanche down from the looming mass in the south, but couldn't quite penetrate under her coat, nor make her lose her footing. To the depths with it, her ancestors had lived through worse.
Distant sounds of thunder came with the wind; doubtlessly, the ice cracking and shifting in the earliest phase of the vernal thaw. Soon the lowlands and the tundra would be soaked with meltwater, and swarming with midges and mosquitoes. The glaciers didn't look diminished yet; they had turned a pale blue, flecked with the red of the dawn-sunset, as if fires had been set within the icy bulk.
She paced back and forth for a while, her boots cracking through the snow's upper crust, and finally moved to the street on the northern side of the building. Five or six people were trudging in the snow, carrying wooden poles and planks, and rolles of rope, and folded canvas rubbed with tar; and little by little they were pulling up stands and banks for the festival's future visitors. Even in this dismal weather, they could not afford much delay; the seventh and last Day of Awakening would come soon, when the Sun would finally detach from the horizon for the first time in the year.
By the seventh day the place should be ready for pilgrims and travellers; the spring festival was all the richer and gayer in the cold and lonely Yakak'ratu, and drew attendance from many places. And by the same day, Kukri ought to be at the edge of the ice, taking her measurements. She approached the workers. Perhaps someone in the city, free from the burdens of the Guild of Carpenters, would consider following her?
pinkgothic:
It was not technically her calling to offer her help erecting the stands. Back home, she wouldn't even have considered it for as much as a fleeting moment - it would hardly have been tolerated much more than she would tolerate someone giving her opinions on the extent and quality of the glacial expanse over the generations.
Similarly, it was not technically her calling to interrupt the work and it was best to wait for a break in the activity, by which time this fleeting hint of dawn would be over and a long, drawn-out twilight would take its place before the night fell yet again.
Talking to someone soon was paramount, though. Someone more familiar with the local terrain would certainly be a good travel companion to have. Even someone not familiar with the terrain would be of great use in helping her carry provisions and equipment, and if she did fall without crippling herself, in helping her back on track.
She pulled her coat a little tighter about herself, breathing thin clouds of frost into the air, and stepped closer to the commotion. Between the wind's brushes of breath, she raised her voice to ask: “Might anyone here be free to travel in the coming days, to assist this representative of the Society of Natural Philosophy in a journey to the edge of the ice?”
Concavenator:
Some of the workers stopped, mostly the younger ones, unsure. The eldest, who balanced heavy planks even as her muzzle feathers were turning grey and sparse, approached Kukri. “Not before the Month of Water”, she began rather brusquely. “We've got to finish building before then”. Her Chaatai was flawless in form, somewhat shaped by a hissing Tayaka accent, but she obviously hadn't had many relations with members of the upper guilds; had Kukri ever addressed her own colleagues this way, they would have pretended not to hear.
She lowered one end of the wooden plank into the snow, and leaned against it, looking much more comfortable than it should be possible in such an environment. “We've few women after last year's draft, and the poxes before that”. The draft, at least, should have spared Yakak'ratu's men, but it didn't need to be said that nobody would have let their son or husband leave with a stranger, even if they'd had no eggs to care for. “Go see the shacks behind the inn, or the temple's yard – plenty of people with nothing to do, over there”.