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--- campaigns:taika-daagru:2022-03-06 [2022-07-30 00:52] – Today's rounds pinkgothic
+++ campaigns:taika-daagru:2022-03-06 [2022-12-29 22:15] (current) – concavenator
@@ Line 104: / Line 104: @@
 Giya gave it some thought, and then: "Yachakri hunt where is flat, flat snow or frozen water. They do never get close to the glaciers; they are afraid when the wind is most strong, you see". Presumably the unidirectional wind made it hard to track preys, frustrating their hearing with its howl, and their sight with the haze of powdered snow it raised; or simply there was not enough life to support such a predator. "We can trick it, with smoke and meat, but we carry little already of it. It's better we walk still; we walk on edge of rocks, where less cracks are. If one comes, we hide in cracks."
+**pinkgothic**:
+A strong wind was hardly in their favour, either, as they had already amply determined, so Kukri felt a strange sympathy with the dangerous beasts for avoiding it. Kukri certainly yearned to return to warmer climes. The urge was kept in check by an equally strong, stubborn yearning to find answers to pressing questions.
+She snorted a little, a private gesture dismissing the displeasure and frustration, vowing to indeed keep it private. Giya was not to blame for the weather or the landscape and Kukri would do her best not to let her deal with any outgrowths of that tiny seed of disgruntlement in her chest.
+"Then we will walk across the rocks," Kukri acknowledged. It would stretch their provisions, but they had both known it would likely come to this. It would be unpleasant, but quite survivable.
+**Concavenator**:
+The watchtowers of the Pole rose out of the snow; here boulders scattered as if tossed around by careless giants, cracked open as if by the blow of a colossal trip-hammer; there piles of black gravel swelling like funeral mounds; sails of stone, filed by the wind to razor-sharpness, and painted with cobwebs of mineral veins. Terrace after terrace the rocky ground became higher and higher, rising into the measureless bulk of the Mountains of Thunder.
+They were a strange sight, all these stones out of their place. Great authorities of glaciology and orography had proposed that in ages past exceptional glaciers must have torn them out of bedrock and carried them, like flotsam down a river, into their current resting place. Kukri was skeptical that glaciers could so much expand their range without apparent cause, but she had no better explanation. So she, along with Giya, waded through the fields of gravel and clambered over the erratic boulders, content with looking at them in silence.
+Then, as they crossed a cold grey plateau, she heard the ground creak and whine under her boots.
+**pinkgothic**:
+The sounds inspired her to caution her step. It seemed unlikely that there were waters under this expanse, this far from the shore and with the slant of the landscape as it was, and rivers not typically freezing smoothly or easily, but the noises still gave Kukri vivid images of the ice giving way under her limbs and plunging her into an even icier environment.
+**Concavenator**:
+There could possibly be nothing but stone and ice in this place; nothing that could fail to bear her weight, could it? Giya moved still, with a strange irregular pace, leaping over some places and throwing her weight on others.
+Still awful visions slowed her pace until she came to a stop on a slab that seemed broader and stouter than most. Giya turned, and pointed at the white seams of ice that seemed to weld the stone blocks together. "Ice between the stones", she said, "sometime goes down all to ground, sometimes only top, nothing below". Certainly one could step on that ice believing that it was as solid as the mountains, only to break through a thin crust, and fall into the crevice below, 'Au'a alone knew how deep, or how dark.
+**pinkgothic**:
+As dreadful as it sounded, Kukri found her mind immediately trying to understand how such a thing would form, coming up blank. "How do the hollows form?" she asked, fully aware that Giya likely didn't know the answer any more than she did, and simply observed that they existed and needed care navigating around.
+**Concavenator**:
+"The stones are cold, too", she replied with a shrug, "In winter you hear them shiver, you hear them hiss and growl. You leave a stone in the cold, and by springtime it's broken. Dead of cold".
+**pinkgothic**:
+So the contraction was creating fissures large enough for a person to fall into? She could see it explaining a crack as wide as a leg, perhaps -- which, to be fair, was still dangerous -- but if so, would still expect the ice to snap along with the rock.
+Maybe once she was safely back home, she could experiment with the thermal elasticity of rock, get a better feeling for--
+She pulled herself out of the thought and resumed her journey, shaking her head a little to clear it of the distraction. Survival now, theorising later.