Disclaimer: Disclaimer-ed
The Ice is Blue Today
Kanna wakes with a start. Her eyelids don't flutter but flash to attention taking in everything around her. She is leaving the North Pole today.
Not even the warm arm around her waist, the rich tiger-seal pelt under her skin, or the slick, sparkling frost on the walls can keep her here.
She takes a moment to lay still though and watch the figure next to her just breathe because life is about breathing and following through. She brings a hand to the necklace around her neck, careful not the jostle the arm that has settled around her and the skin pressed against her own.
Moving slowly and standing carefully, Kanna begins to dress quickly. She has done the same motions day after day, but as she slips on her boots she pauses. Just for a moment. Everything about today, this morning, the dark blue light filtering into this tiny alcove in one of the many protective walls, is clear. So clear. Everything has gained a fine edge. Her eyes are drinking in the lasts sights they will ever see of the North Pole. The walls were meant to keep that was inside safe, but Kanna is going to get out. The brightness of the icy walls hold her still for a moment, despite, and she looks around the this place, one last time. It holds none of the grandeur of the true city but the tiger-seal pelt just an arm's length away tells her there is something special here still.
But she doesn't stay. She goes through the motions. She's been practicing this for so long. She slips out and through and when she finally pushing away from the walls of her home-no-longer she is struck by the way the waves seem to slip around her. Playful. The sea is so blue and the sky is so bright and the lightness of the moment takes her breath away. Breath being all that life has to give.
She hadn't let him kiss her. That would have made her rethink. That would have made her regret. But she had let him press his cold lips to her cheek, to her eyelids, to her shoulders and to her hips and thighs and wrists. She had lain next to him and held him close as they shimmered and flickered like flames in a cold place.
There wasn't much to her name now. But she kept the necklace. It was hers to keep.
