Lukas sighed, seeing his own breath freeze and fade into the chilled air, as he trudged across the frigid land. His trek, similar to the icy expanse, seemed endless. Had he strayed from the correct path? When will he finally reach the warm safety of home? He continued to ask himself the same questions repeatedly every day as hours dragged on. He only knew his place from the aged, rugged map, which was amazingly still readable, and a tarnished compass. The glass of the compass was polished, enough so that he could see his reflection on the glass; a tired man who was in a hurry to reach his destination. He hadn't even spared the time to properly brush the messy fringes of hair that poked out from his thick hood.
Quietly, he scanned the map and checked the compass as the needle steadied. Southwest, just along his planned route. The path was marked on the map with black ink, snaking around the higher peaks of mountains, but crossing only through a glacier. Had he tried going around, days spent heading to his goal would only grow. Glancing up from the map, he surveyed the massive and frozen glacier with his equally cold eyes.
Returning the map and compass to their proper place in his pack, Lukas carefully stepped from the safety of the solid rock to the possibly unstable ice. The sheer size of the glacier unnerved him. He was surrounded by mountainous terrain with tips capped with snow, the crystal he strode upon nestled between the higher grounds. The clouds were somber and ashy, blanketing the sky. Yet with all the time he couldn't waste, he had a natural curiosity the he couldn't shove away; it tugged and gnawed at his mind. Lukas knelt, pressing a gloved hand on the powdery surface. He could hardly feel the texture of it, but he could tell the snow lying on the hundreds of meters of ice below was soft, cottony. Wet, by the looks of it. It must be fresh, perhaps having fallen from the moody clouds above.
He knew the risks of crossing a glacier when he composed the path. The ice of a glacier was unpredictable. He'd heard tales of travelers who crossed them, only to be swallowed up by sudden weather changes and the blizzards that followed without warning, or slipping on the ice, tumbling down a crevasse below. Lukas had no choice; he had made a promise to return by week's end. But he was in a greater danger with his journey's conditions, and he knew it: He was vulnerable, as he had nobody accompanying him to help should anything unpleasant or greater occur. The weight of his backpack that carried vital camping supplies, ice picks for precarious situations, and rations for his trek didn't necessarily aid his speed or agility either.
The Norwegian got up with a short delay due to the weight and began to carefully step his way to the mountains across from where he started. The snow made small, crunching noises beneath his boots as he walked, tentatively stepping over small fractures in the ice on the surface. As he approached the midway point of the glacier, he heard a sharp, echoing shot behind him.
His stoic eyes widened, and he whipped his head to look behind him, his body otherwise paralyzed in fear. A long silence that seemed to drag out forever is broken when another loud crack fills the air, before a series of the same noises dominate his hearing. The ice far behind began to collapse and fall into the valley. No time to waste standing around, he broke out into a sprint, stumbling on the slick ice at some moments and breathing hard, trying to outrun the breaking chaos behind him in a race for the safety of the rock. Lukas' slippery yet brisk dash is interrupted by his foot getting caught on a fracture hidden beneath the snow. He pitched forward and crashes into the hard surface. The cascading ice was approaching him quickly, cracking sounds increasing in intensity. He launched himself into a crawl forward, trying to restart his upright sprint. Lukas falls short of that when midway up into the position in front of a large crevasse, the crumbling ice catches him. He cried out when the ice fell from underneath, and grabbed one of the ice picks kept on each side of the side of his backpack, desperately trying to successfully dig it into the impervious crevasse wall flying up in front.
As he plummeted with the chunks of ice, he threw an arm forward, the pick catching on to the crevasse wall. His body swung into the icy barrier with a thud. He grunted in a pained fashion before using his one free, dangling hand to grab the other ice pick and proceeded to climb up, one swing at a time. Crawling up to the surface of the glacier, he holstered the picks and hurriedly ran to the rocks to avoid a repeat of the frightening incident. The crunch of snow changing to the sweet, gravelly sound of pebbles, he dropped to ground with a huff.
After some minutes of rest, he propped himself up back into an upright stance. The almost-disaster had rattled him, considering he stared death in the eye just then. Climbing a rugged path to the top of the rocky face of the mountain slowly soothed him. However, he shuddered when he glanced back to the glacier's edge just once, where the ice had collapsed. A fondness for the steady ground beneath him bloomed. If he was that childish, he would've kissed it. Lukas exhaled a breath he held before continued along his projected path. He didn't want to be late home. He had a promise to keep. Making a dearest and wild companion wait worriedly at his doorstep in the cold weather was a rather discourteous gesture, after all.