Wolf Song (work in progress)

Alyssa worried for the dogs, and fumbled to open the tent flap. The wind rushed through the opening, a vicious elemental seeking to tear the thing apart. Alyssa was forced to close it again; it was with effort that she managed to restore the barrier between her and the wind. She had managed to see the dogs, though; she assumed them to be the mass of furry balls before the tent, gradually being covered in a blanket of snow. Clearly they had more experience with such weather than she. Alyssa feared that the wind might carry away the tent entirely, but eventually the voice of the wind, too, fell to silence.

When Alyssa opened her eyes once again, it was quiet. Light shone through the tent walls. The sun, seen all too rarely here, had arrived while she slept. Alyssa hastened to get ready; sunlight hours were few and valuable. She donned the necessary layers of clothing, laced up her parka, pulled on her boots and mittens, and opened the tent flap. She gasped.

Before her was whiteness. There was no sky, no horizon, only white. It was if some god had come along and erased the landscape entirely. Even her hand in front of her face was ill-defined, wrapped as it was in the thick soup of whiteness.

 A whiteout. She had known they occurred, but had not expected to encounter one. Foolish girl, she thought to herself. Alyssa needed to be prepared to face anything. Underestimating the elements could mean death.

The dogs seemed unfazed by the weather conditions, and greeted her with eager whines. They seemed to have suffered none in the night, and their appetites were as insatiable as ever. After feeding the dogs and fixing a meal for herself, Alyssa broke camp and loaded up the dogsled. She figured she might as well make good use of the daylight as long as she had it, whiteout or no.

Once the dogs had been harnessed and the gear packed, there was nothing to do but leave. Alyssa mounted the dogsled… but then hesitated. Before them stretched featureless whiteness. Now that there wasn’t even a pitched tent beside them to create a sense of being grounded, Alyssa felt that it could be as if she and the dogs were suspended in nothingness, the only beings in existence.

Alyssa could barely make out the lead dogs through the haze, much less whatever might lay ahead of them. She bit her lip. Was it really wise to continue?

A few of the huskies now began to look back at her, as if to ask “What’s the holdup?” One of the closer ones, a black masked she-dog named Gwen, tilted her head inquisitively, whining gently.

“Yeah, I’m good,” Alyssa said in reply, steeling her resolve. More loudly, “Hike!” she called. They were off, eight sets of paws breaking the silence as they leapt forward as one.

Alyssa felt as if they ran through a cloud, or perhaps only a dream of one; a dream of a girl and eight ghostly, wolfish dogs gliding through whiteness. Alyssa wondered who the dreamer could be. Nonetheless, she supposed the dream was lovely, in its own way, and wondered if it would go on forever. In fact, Alyssa could hardly even feel the cold anymore; perhaps this was due to this white blanket that enfolded her...

Suddenly, Alyssa slammed into something solid. She gasped as the wind was knocked out of her. She came to realize that her own gasping was, in fact, the only sound present; it was around this time that she realized that she was no longer on the sled, nor vertical. She quieted her breath, and in the calm was able to hear the fading sound of a dogsled receding into the distance. She looked up in time to see the last hint of its shadow vanishing into the haze.

Instantly, alertness returned to her. Alyssa stumbled to her feet, ran in the direction the direction the sled had gone, marked by trampled snow. She tripped and fell to all fours, got up and kept going, then fell again. She couldn’t bring herself to rise again.