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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.