Icebound

Chapter 28

Anyu expected to feel the shock of cold as the snow buried them, the unstoppable force of the avalanche as it crushed them beneath its path.

Instead, she felt warm. A comfortable sort of warmth, as if a fire was burning beneath her very skin. She slowly opened her eyes. Ice and snow surrounded them, but it did not move forward to crush them. Instead it formed a sort of cocoon within the ice, protecting and hiding them from within.

Anyu stood up, looking around intently. Enough light filtered down through the ice for her to see. Shesh was lying on his belly, completely knocked out, and both Tavra and Kano had yet to wake up as well, using Shesh's soft fur as a pillow.

Anyu cocked her head to the side, listening. There was no sound, no movement. The avalanche was over, probably had been for a while now. She thought of Sakari and shivered. Hopefully she believed them to be dead. If not... Well, Anyu didn't want to entertain the alternative.

But nothing immediately explained exactly how they had survived, or what had created this small, protective space out of ice and snow specifically for them. Anyu walked up to the wall of the cocoon. It had a strange, shiny quality to it, almost as if...

Curious, Anyu removed one of her gloves and pressed her palm to the ice. It came away soaking wet from the melting wall. Anyu looked from the wall back to her hand again. The heat that she'd felt as she woke up... It didn't seem possible but the only explanation seemed to be that she had done this, somehow melted away any of the ice that would have crushed them.

Anyu walked over to the others and shook Kano's shoulder.

"Kano," She hissed. "Kano, wake up."

After a few seconds his eyes opened, and he slowly stood up taking in their surroundings.

"So we're not dead?"

"No."

"Well, that's good."

Anyu sighed, sitting back down on the icy floor. She didn't even have the energy to scold him. "But we're stuck in here, as far as I can tell," She said, knocking a fist against the solid ice beneath them. "So I suppose we'll be dead soon anyway."

Kano was silent for a moment longer, his eyes moving around their little bubble of ice.

"Not necessarily," He said after he seemed to finish his evaluation. "We can get out the same way we got in- just melt some ice, and we'll get to the surface."

Anyu frowned. "It's not that easy," She protested. Tavra stirred in his sleep, and she lowered her voice. "This- this was unconscious!" She shoved her hand in his face, as if it was some kind of evidence of her incompetence. "I don't know what I'm doing, remember? This inua thing- I don't know how it works!"

Kano waited patiently for her to finish before standing up, and walking to one of the walls. Unsure of what he was doing, Anyu stood up to follow him. He put his hand against it, just as Anyu had, and discovered that the walls were half melted away.

He dried his hand on his tunic, and spoke without looking up. "Do you remember how you weakened the ice on Kesuk lake?" He asked simply.

Anyu nodded.

"That wasn't normal ice- it was Sedna's, her creation. The entire thing was infused with part of her inua." He said. "When I grabbed your hand then, that was me giving you some of my inua, in order to melt it. I didn't think you'd be strong enough to do it on your own."

He lifted his head and fixed Anyu with his gaze. "Sakari's ice is the same as her sister's- it has a part of her inua to it, except hers is even stronger." He raised a brow. "This time, I didn't give you any extra power, Anyu- you did this by yourself."