Tagra

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**Concavenator**:

The hours of night went by. When the clock announced the beginning of the new day, both travellers stirred from the torpor with greater ease than ever, and rushed to break open the shell of packed snow that had sheltered them. The air outside was still cold and bitter, and the snowfields still bathed in a dim blue, but its taste had shifted somewhat. The spring solar cycles were well underway, now; it would not take long for sunlight to take possession of land, as it already had on the wind-scoured coast. Going by Giya's estimates, it was quite possible to reach the edge of the ice that very day; if not, the next one. It was a thrilling thought.

**pinkgothic**:

The moods of the seasons were part of 'ikra nature, but there was an absolute brutality to the stubborn darkness of winter that even adaption did not let Kukri shake. The dirty band of blue the vaguely suggested sunlight felt ever-present, the tick of the clock arbitrary and artificial. The hope was real, though, even though the visible weather currently still scoffed at the idea that today might be different than the ones before.

Kukri could feel hunger gnawing at her innards, but it was far from all-consuming. It was a reminder that she was doing more physical work on this trek than she was accustomed to, burning more fuel than she might strictly like. She knew to indulge her body once the sensation became stronger, but for the moment, it was more valuable for them to continue.

They were getting increasingly good at packing their belongings for the trek, and in a few minutes they were back to their walk, trekking across the landscape as surely as though someone had built a road for them to follow, or otherwise marked their way.

**Concavenator**:

The rocky ground was uneven and tilted every way, but at least the snow wasn't very deep, and indeed the wind had swept many places clear. They came across more scattered boulders and vast piles of gravel that must have slid from the upper ground over the centuries. Massive things, blotting out the stars when one walked beneath the boulders, or shifting treacherously underfoot when one crossed the gravel fields, tossed around like children toys.

When the sun appeared, red and fuming, in the haze of the north, the travelers allowed themselves a brief rest. They sat on a flat limestone slab and tore strips of dried meat; the best ones they kept for the meal at the glacier, of course. The last part of the trek, while not worse than wading through the snow, would still take plenty of exertion; the meat finished, Kukri discreetely swallowed a couple of gizzard stones from her own portable box, to help with digestion. She offered the box to Giya, who most likely had always had to make good with random pebbles.

The apprehension before the printed mountains, the frightful //yachakri// fight, they were vanishing along with the winter night. They could do it. It was going well.

**pinkgothic**:

Kukri could feel the promise of a full-body ache resting in her joints. It wasn't the first time she was out in the field, but it had been the most gruelling trek her body had seen as of yet. It might become a problem on the way back, but it was - //had// to be - a bridge to cross once they got there. The knowledge that they would be heading back would hopefully buoy her when push came to shove.

But for now, a promise was all it was, and they could continue.

Kukri imagined that her own weariness was quite visible and, in turn, thought that she could see little of it in Giya. For a woman as undernourished as that, Giya was remarkably resilient. Kukri might have been envious, had she not been aware of the price it had come at.

They could have easily made vapid conversation. She could have asked how Giya was faring. She could have made observations of the path ahead of them that both of them could see with their own eyes. No, a grateful gesture to her companion would do for now, as they rose for the last stretch of their journey into the heart of the ice.

**Concavenator**:

The last few hours went by quickly and silently, the sun creeping around the horizon, the travellers rushing over the rocky foothills. Here the wind grew louder and more biting, laden with powdered ice that glistened red in the low light, making sheets of gravel flow like water down the slopes.

At last a blinding bar of light rose over the southern horizon, like a dawn opposite to the sunset. The edge of the glaciers, the membrane of the vast frozen amoeba that spread its white pseudopods over the crests and plateaux of the Mountains of Thunder; on one side, declining into the Throat of the Sea to cast out the icebergs that every spring joined the garrison around Tagra; on the other, spreading its mantle over the flat and shadowy Polar Fields, the heart of the world.

Ice swelled and bulged out in tongues and udders that spread over the stones, stained red and black with windblown dust, studded with rocky debris of unimaginable antiquity, and of all sizes from the finest sand to fortress-sized boulders. Pure white at the top, in the freshest layers, changing below to a deep blue that even the sunset could not erase, where the formidable weight had squeezed out every air pocket. The catabatic wind had cut deep vertical gouges, from which poured rivers of fog that dissolved upon as soon as touched by the sun.

"This is the place, no?" Giya asked, with a tone that seemed to ask whether seeing that monster of ice was really worth all their hardships."I take the tools from the bag now?"

**pinkgothic**:

"This is the place," Kukri confirmed, a satisfied exhaustion in her voice. "Yes." Kukri set down her baggage, allowing herself a few breaths of standing at the end of her journey, in- and exhaling relief, as though deep inside she held fast to the belief that the way back would be any less gruelling. She knew the opposite would be true. They would be hungry and thirsty when they got back to civilisation. But she still relished this moment, feeling so much like an achievement.

Of course, anyone suitably stubborn and stupid could walk to the glaciers. But it took a scientist to make anything of them. And, in light of that Giya was, perhaps, at some point, to be precisely that, Kukri smiled upon her and worked to teach her how to use the tools, how to record the results, and what she was doing the individual readings for.

**Concavenator**:

The rocks in this site had been carefully recorded and drawn from many point of views, providing clear reference points. Here the Broken Tusk, there the Penguin Head, the Four Nestlings just above, the Grasshoppers sprawling below. All the distances and angles between them, too, had been mapped in great detail. It was a simple affair, if a long one, to set the theodolite at the four different points and measure the extension of the tongues of ice, write down the measurements, and run them through the trigonometric tables.

Giya seemed somewhat lost at first, when Kukri was fiddling with the screws fixing the theodolite's orientation in place, or unfolding a scroll tightly covered in digits over a flat stone. Her ability to read and count was modest, to say the least. But with only eight symbols to keep track of, she learned quickly enough to read the graduated scales and call the angles for Kukri to write. Work with the tables would come later, and for that matter it could be done just as well in the safety of home.

They recorded the shape and extension of the great prow of ice that seemed the furthest extent of the glacier, suspended at some fifty paces above the ground; the fluted wedge that held it up; the jumble of shards that had tipped over and fallen sometime during the winter; and many other landmarks, twinkling in the last light. Just before darkness was complete, the volume and size of the glacier's edge were transferred into the paper of Kukri's notebook at the light of the alcohol stove. To that, Giya said: "So this is what you did want to do? You say I will learn to do it too?"

**pinkgothic**:

"Yes, although the mechanics of it are the cognitively easy part," Kukri revealed. "It's another matter to understand what the angles and distances mean, how they relate to previous measurements and what they tell us of the future." She tapped claws against the notebook. "We've done the mechanical part. It was hard work, but not for the mind. //That// work starts now."

**Concavenator**:

Something disturbing was in the numbers, which pulsed and twisted in the paper at the flickering flame-light; and in the prow of ice that they described vertex by vertex, looming above the piles of gravel and above the travellers themselves, as a predator waiting to pounce upon them from a tree. But this was not the moment to unweave the numbers yet; the howl and whistling of the wind would scramble their weary thoughts too much for such work; and any discovery would just distract them from the delicate task of returning home... and deciding of Giya's fate as well.

That was a good night; their greatest task had been fulfilled, their mission was past the midpoint to completion, and Giya had proved herself a most excellent guide in this wretched landscape. They were shivering as they folded the theodolite back into its case and rolled up the notebook; the numbers... no, it was not the moment yet. Kukri took out their best rations of dried meat and a little flask of spiced oil to celebrate their dinner at the edge of the ice, perhaps a more satisfying banquet than they could expect back in Chaatai.

Giya consumed her part in silence and voraciously, and only after she had finished licking all traces of oil from her fingers she said: "I am glad I come with you to this place. But I hope we go back soon to Grikaa, so I give news to my father, and so I can see the things you told me."

**pinkgothic**:

Even though it was inconclusive, more intuition than science, the numbers nagged at the back of Kukri's mind like the precursor to dread, even as she nodded assent to Giya. There was no reviewing the numbers now, anyway, they had been packed away. Her memory of them might be unreliable. "Yes, we'll go back as soon as we're able."

Now that they had walked all this way, they knew the journey back, and where it was good to rest and where it was better to keep moving. There were some opportunities to rest not far from their present position. Despite the last strides of their trek to the glacier and the work of the measurements across the past hours, they could begin their trek back.

It tugged at her, though, these glaciers. She could feel a certain reluctance to leave, even though it was dangerous to stay - their rations were already stretched thin, the more they dawdled the more it would become a problem. But the sense that the glaciers might tell her something pivotal if she stayed, if only she figured out how to read them...

"Let's go," she said.

**Concavenator**:

Despite that worming sensation, the walk away from the Pole was easier, with their ration packs lighter, their objective safe (almost -- they still had to bring the numbers safe between standing walls, and under a solid roof); and most importantly with the wind at their backs, almost as if driving them on rather than pushing them away. Almost as if the glaciers didn't want Kukri to linger among them.

But it would take several more days to reach civilization again, and all that time the glaciers would follow her, would fill the creases of her brain as they filled the valleys of the Mountains of Thunder. She had to find a way to keep her mind occupied, to push out the shadows of overlapping numbers that threatened to invade it.

**pinkgothic**:

And so she spoke to Giya. She intended nothing in particular with it, so it was easiest to simply teach, shaping her thoughts into presentable chunks, the act of preparation filling the silences when their physical effort forced them into silence.

She shared with Giya the basics of meteorology - some of the most practical knowledge she could share with someone who might yet refuse the offer to learn the sciences, out of frustration with them. It was in the spirit of the offer to mentor her and Giya would have her own intuitions and memories of weather patterns as a baseline from which to expand her knowledge from. It would not be information that lived in a void.

Meteorology gave way, by way of the sky, to what she could say of astronomy. It wasn't her deep interest, like the rocks, the ice, the weather and climes, but it was enough to bring them to their first resting place without her mind wandering.

And when they did rest, the sky was still there, vast and empty and cold. It sunk into her dreams, swelling to filling them, displacing the lights of civilisation and the soft of feathers and the warmth of a beating heart, drowning her in black ice, casting her limbs and lungs into frozen shackles.

She made a soft, reflexive mewling sound as she woke. The clear sky, that firmament that all traces of warmth bled into as the long night continued, colluded with the exhaustion in her bones: It was too early. Sleep, they said. Go back to sleep.

Kukri squeezed her eyes closed, but it was out of dread, not to sleep. Her rational faculties were still thawing; she didn't yet have the intellectual strength to banish the emotional certainty that she would drown if she went back to sleep. And so she lay awake for a few minutes, calming herself back down.

The numbers, though.

If she hadn't been certain that she needed the sleep, she would have taken to lighting a lamp and reviewing them, but it seemed obvious that it was the worst course of action. There was no peace of mind there.

And so, eventually, by sheer deprivation of action or reasonable thought to linger on, she did fall back into sleep.

**Concavenator**:

In a way, sleep by exhaustion was welcomed, as it was the darkest and quietest, and least disturbed by the rumors of wake. But she could not count on exhaustion forever; she felt as if her brain would slowly fill with poison, until it was wrung out by dream, even nightmare.

Cycle after cycle, as spring slowly and painfully broke through the crust of winter, Kukri find that her embryonic lectures to Giya were the only part of the day in which she could be at rest. She could stroll in mind, abreast of a friend, through the well-tended gardens of natural philosophies, even as her body had to trudge across crumbling snowdrifts and knife-sharp morains. She could point at the equations of orbital motion, at the taxonomy of climatic regimes, lighting the way brighter and more fixed than the actual stars.

Often she found herself repeating a statement for the second or third time. Repetition could be good for learning, after all, without the benefit of scrolls or tablets; wasn't by repetition that penguin herders learned their songs, and !Aakau'a shamans their incantations? Giya listened to all. Kukri couldn't always be certain if it was out of genuine interest or simply deference to whom she'd been taught to see as her superiors but she asked questions sometimes -- if clouds are made of liquid water, why do they not fall? if the globe turns at such a speed, why does it not shake off all its water? how can one measure how distant is a star?

But night came again and again (although later, imperceptibly, with every cycle) and she had to return to her body of feathers and blood, huddle closer to Giya's own vessel, and surrender to the necessity of sleep until dawn.

**pinkgothic**:

A little under half a day's travel away from Yakak'ratu, with their rations depleted - as expected, and in themselves not cause for alarm, as they could fast until Kukri could spend favours for a meal for them both, and Giya in particular was an expert in fasting - Kukri slipped.

It was a foolish mistake to make this late on the journey, but sleep, while mostly guided by exhaustion, had been less reliable since the glaciers, and her attention not quite as much on the treacherous landscape as it should, especially as it gentled.

She gave no curt yowl, no drawn whimper, she simply sank with one limb into a shallow crevice, its angles twisting at her left knee. Some sound that was neither a wet squelch nor a neat snapping sound - and far softer than either of the two - came from the limb, accompanied by a tense, drawn out exhale from Kukri, and the far more overpowering sound of the rucksack sloshing to the side.

It took long seconds for Kukri to recover enough to make deliberate movements. Giya was there, of course, and could offer assistance, but Kukri gestured with muzzle and limb that she was capable of extracting herself.

Ten minutes later, she'd done so, sitting with her weight mostly carried by her right leg, testing the integrity of her left. "I can walk," she promised, finally, giving Giya her verdict, her tone one of grim self-admonishment. The knee was in pain from the torsion, but not broken or dislocated - and its pain would be a good lesson to her not to think so much of the future as to forget the present.

**Concavenator**:

After so many attempts to ignore it, Kukri's body had reasserted itself in the bluntest, least deniable way. Or perhaps 'Au'a the Watchful had decided to chastise the unworthy servant who had forgotten to be watchful for too long. Either way, at least the culprit had been merciful enough to wait until they were in reach of 'ikrakind.

There was little to do but force herself back to Yakak'ratu; they could not afford to sit down and wait for improvement. Kukri pulled a tentpole out of the baggage and improvised a cane, both to help support her weight and to probe the softer snow, something that she should have done with much greater caution all along. This, if nothing else, would take her mind away from her usual reverie of numbers; hard to focus on anything else, when lances of pain shot through her legs at nearly every step. What a marvellous invention was pain, and how dull her ancestors must have been if this was necessary to prevent them from destroying themselves.

Perhaps this could have been an opportunity for teaching too, but in truth at this moment she felt far too foolish to teach anything to anyone, save perhaps herself. Giya was delicate enough not to offer advice that would only have been useful before the fact, and merely offered to take some of Kukri's baggage to make the burden on her feet lighter. When the mist cleared, the lights of Yakak'ratu were already visible in the distance; they could pull through yet.

**pinkgothic**:

The embarrassment of the fall was quite manageable. It wasn't Kukri's first expedition into treacherous territory and she knew fine well that it was the end of the journey that was the most dangerous for such things, when one's mind considered the dangers already overcome. She should have known better, yes, but it soothed her, in between the barbs of pain, that it had happened when it could, rather than when it would have consigned her to certain death. Now it was merely an inconvenience and a bruise to her pride.

"Thank you for your guidance," Kukri said, when she was sure that the pause between spikes of pain would last long enough to say it. "I might not have made it on my own."

Technically, she had not yet made it. Even if they crossed the final steps to Yakak'ratu, it was still not Grikaa. The world could offer her no guarantees that she would make it there, only a generous probability. But it was enough.

**Concavenator**:

In the end, Kukri did have to walk leaning somewhat onto Giya, if for no other reason than to avoid listing on one side and spilling her baggage on the ground. But step by painful step, the lights, then the sounds, then the scents took them back. The snow became trampled to mush, scraped to its gravelly bed, and littered with all sorts of rubbish chips of wood, animal dung, frayed rags, gnawed fish bones. How beautiful, how tender, how comforting that rubbish was, a promise of soft beds, warm meals, standing walls, and fires to thaw frozen feathers and drive away roving //yachakri//.

The weary travellers took the last wavering steps that brought them within the borders of Yakak'ratu, last sentinel among the cities of the deepest south. Wind from the glaciers still lapped at their back; but now it was reduced to the strength of a breath. Wooden shacks rose to greet them, creaking and smoking, glowing a warm yellow through crevices and boarded windows. People, real living people, the last stragglers of the early spring feast, paced all way on the greyish sleet of the alleys. There was civilization, finally, to a degree.