Four hours later, she was cursing herself for an idiot.
The route had been difficult. It didn't have a clear, usable trail like the ride up to the cabin.
She'd had to stop and backtrack several times to find a path through dense woods, or to find a place to safely cross an iced-over stream, or to avoid a rocky outcrop.
Then there had been the stops to try to triangulate. She would find a clearing of some sort. It wouldn't feel right, but she would stop anyway, standing on the seat of the snowmobile, and gazing to the north, and then back to the east. "Not far enough west yet," she would mutter, and drop down, kicking the machine back into gear.
She pushed on past when she should have. The late afternoon was beginning to take hold.
She would have to overnight in the cold. "Idiot. Fucking idiot." She knew there was an emergency pop-tent in the gear, she'd made sure of that. Along with flares, firestarter, a portable heating element for melting snow into drinking water, emergency rations, and a thermal bag, she wouldn't die out here from one night in the rough.
But it was still stupid to rely on those. She could have waited. She could have waited until morning, had time to ride out this far and make it back to the cabin before dark.
"I could have slept in a warm fucking bed!" Visions of that damned fireplace, that she had specifically kindled, taunted her.
She was in a foul mood, and ready to use the last of the light to make a camp, when she broke through into a fifth clearing.
Her mood changed to shock immediately.
In the middle of the clearing was a glow, blue-white, that dazzled her eyes against the dimming daylight that remained. Her eyes drifted to the right, seeing the glacier wall in the distance… to the north. Behind her, the Triple Crown's peaks. And before her… something.
Clamping down on her emotions, trying to calm her racing pulse, she worked cautiously, riding a complete circuit around the perimeter of the clearing, eyes and ears straining for any sign of threat. And finding none.
After that first pass, she slowly spiraled inward, amber eyes bouncing between the glow in the center, and the treeline outward, still unwilling to trust her senses fully. The memory of her dreams continuing to make her question, to doubt.
The machine was within a dozen yards of the center of the clearing before she could make out the source of the glow, and it caused her to stop, frozen in place, for several minutes as the engine idled beneath her. Eyes wide, her thoughts struggled to reconcile what she saw.
It was a person.
There was a… person. Encased in that blue-white light that pulsed gently as the figure inside it rotated, on its side, slowly like game on a roasting spit.
"What the hell…"
She dismounted, barely remembering to set the snowmobile brake, and turned the engine off. Then she heard it. A soft thrum that sounded in time with the slow pulsing light and rotation. Eyes wide and ears alert and trembling, she approached the figure warily.
It was a…young human male. Yes. Definitely a human male. Dark skinned, and human. And male. She could tell this because… well. It had all the appropriate bits. And she knew this because it… he… was completely naked.
She repeated on foot what she had done on the snowmobile. Circling warily around the turning, glowing man. His arms were folded across his chest. His legs straight and together. Eyes closed. She couldn't tell whether he was breathing, but the vibe he gave off was someone in deep sleep. Or unconscious. Or maybe just dead.
"No… no you aren't dead. You don't feel dead."
She realized she was on her third circuit, and stopped.
"Now what?" She cast her eyes around, once more. The darkness had completely fallen, she could barely see the treeline now, especially with the glow from… from… popsicle-man… messing with her night vision. A thought occurred to her, immediately discarded. "There is no way in hell I'm touching the mysterious blue-white glowing thing to see what happens. That's a Ruby or Yang thought, not a Blake Belladonna thought."
Scratch that. That was definitely a Ruby thought. A Yang thought would have been to yell "Yo dude put some clothes on before you freeze your jewels off!"
Eyes darting back and forth, she reached a decision, and bent down, scooping up some snow, forming it into a small ball, and gently pitching it underhanded at the rotating figure.
Only to jump back with a gasp as, with a strange, backward *snap* sound, the blue glow disappeared, and popsicle-man surrendered to gravity, dropping like a stone to the snow below.
And in a cloud of steam, sank immediately out of sight.
"Shit!"
As the obscuring cloud quickly thinned, Blake jumped forward, thinking to pull him out of the resulting hole, only to find that what she thought had been solid ground only inches below the snow, was actually only one of several layers of ice and snow, many of which had apparently collapsed onto him as he dropped through them. There was no way she was digging through that by hand.
She raced back to the snowmobile, extracting out a folding shovel, and bolted back to the hole, digging frantically at one side in a stairstep fashion, trying to make sure she didn't end up buried down there herself in the process.
A quiet and confused moan from deeper in the snow pit answered one question. Well, you are definitely not dead. At least not yet.
The snow and ice layers had melted quickly, and were refreezing at the margins. Slush crept into her clothing as she worked frantically. Seconds turned into minutes until she was almost neck deep in the hole, when she saw feeble movement in the remaining slushy pile. She reached with freezing hands into the mess, and found solid flesh, then an arm, and began pulling.
Popsicle-man made quiet pained noises as she dragged him free of the slush. He was soaking wet, and his fingers and toes were turning what looked like unhealthy colors for someone as dark as he was. His lips had a purple hue. "That can't be good." She felt his check with a hand, but her own were so cold she couldn't tell how cold he really was. She looked at the slope of the pit, and back to the man, and her lips narrowed.
Bolting back to the machine, she grabbed a rope, making a fast harness loop, and returning to the pit she quickly wrapped it around his torso, getting more pitiful noises out of him.
"Look buddy, I'm doing my best here. Just hold on for a little longer." She pushed her exhausted muscles out of the pit one more fucking time, and tied the rope to the back of the snowmobile. Turning it on, she gently applied the throttle until it began moving forward.
It worked, but not perfectly. I should have put something under him to act like a sled. He was out of the hole, but he had snowplowed his head back under the snow in the process. She quickly cleared away the snow and patted his face. "Hey buddy. Wake up."
One eyelid opened, the eyeball below rolling and unfocused. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out but chattering teeth and a questioning look.
"There you are. I'm Blake. I'm going to save your frozen ass. Stay with me, okay?" He made a face, and then his eyelid rolled shut again.
"Shit." She could feel herself getting sluggish too. More from exertion than the cold, though the cold definitely didn't help. She ran back to the snowmobile one final time, grabbing the emergency gear.
The spring-loaded pop tent went up quickly with a snap of the wrist after the safety straps were removed. Then the thermal bag went inside. She threw the heating element inside too, and then grabbed her new acquaintance by the armpits and dragged him inside the shelter, and tried to shove him into the thermal bag. It was… not fun.
"Would have been nice if you'd had on a fucking stitch of clothing that I could use to grab on to!" She grated as she finally managed to get him stuffed into the thermal bag.
She sealed the tent from the inside, and triggered the snow-melter's heating element. It wouldn't be great for heating the tent, it wasn't really designed for that, but it was better than nothing.
She watched for a minute as the man seemed to get gradually worse, instead of better. His movements were getting more sluggish, teeth chattering even worse.
She sighed. "Of course not, Blake. It's a thermal bag. It holds heat in. It doesn't make heat. Popsicle-Man doesn't have any to hold in." She considered throwing the heating element in there with him, and discarded that as extremely dangerous.
Her eyes narrowed, ears drooping, and she picked at a fingernail. "Yeah. Yeah, I know." She muttered, starting to shed clothing. "Yay me, freaking hero."
As she slid her underwear-clad form into the thermal bag next to the man, she hissed. This guy really is a popsicle. It was like someone crammed a giant ice sculpture into her sleeping bag. It was painful how cold he was against her skin.
She gritted her teeth. "You are going to owe me," she hissed, as she curled against him, big-spoon style. Though whether she was talking to the man, or to whatever had led her here, she didn't know.
As the adrenaline wore off, and her companion leached away her warmth, her energy seemed to go with it. Minutes later, the day's exertion did its work, and she gave in to sleep. Her last coherent thought was if I wake up next to a corpse, I'm going to need years of therapy.