Winter Tales

Chapter 14 - Survival Skills

++Luke's POV++

I cannot even put in words how relieved I am when I find Sam climbing back up the mountain with Jordan in tow and Lily in his arms.

The past half an hour or so must have been one of the worst of my life. I am still in some sort of daze over everything that happened. I guess that is what being caught in the middle of a natural disaster does to you. It took me a moment to get my bearings once the first shock of just having survived an avalanche had passed. I was almost reluctant to believe that no more masses of snow were threatening to bury us alive.

Will and I had been going down the mountain on our snowboards pretty much in sync, with only a few feet between us. It was enjoyable, despite the bad weather conditions. He was first to notice that something was amiss and his reaction, in hindsight, was quite impressive. It is the sole reason why we managed to avoid the worst of it.

We immediately raced towards the small forest to the left side of the slopes and I prayed that it would provide enough cover for us to survive the imminent onslaught of snow. Before I dived pretty much head first into the trees and scrubs, I caught a glimpse of two dark figures further down the slope, towards the right. And that was the last I saw of Jordan and my little sister until our reunion just now.

It turned out that Sam had reacted similarly to us when he realised the danger he was in. That is probably why he found us only about fifteen minutes after it all happened. His frantically yelling our names brought me out of my initial stupor and I called out towards him to give him our location.

It was only once he had joined me that I noticed that we hadn't yet heard a sound from Will.

My younger brother was a few yards ahead of me when I reached the treeline in my frantic attempt to outrun the avalanche. It didn't take us long to find him, thanks to the trees that had indeed provided quite good protection, meaning that none of us got buried under much snow.

But I will probably never forget the sensation of dread that shot through me when we spotted Will lying lifelessly on ground, shoved rather haphazardly up against a mid-sized tree.

For a moment, I honestly believed that he was dead.

I just stood there, unable to move because I was so overwhelmed by everything. Meanwhile, Sam jumped into action. He hurried over to Will and immediately started to check him out. It must have been the longest few seconds I have ever had to endure until Sam turned towards me and gave me an encouraging nod and a thumbs up.

Of course, Will was still alive.

Bad weeds grow tall, is how the saying goes, right?

We quickly established that even if he was unconscious, he still had a strong and steady pulse. I don't think I have ever been more grateful to have a brother who is at least partially medically trained – seeing as Sam is a physio therapist. He knew exactly what he was doing.

I, on the other hand, was completely useless. It quickly became painfully obvious that I don't deal well with stressful, potentially life-threatening situations. Instead of acting on instinct and switching into survival mode, as people are supposed to do in these kind of situations, all I managed to do was stand there like an idiot, unable to sort through the millions of mostly irrational thoughts running through my mind.

If we get out of this predicament in one piece, I have to consider doing some first aid training, or at least take some other measures to work on and increase my resilience.

Will regained consciousness a few minutes after Sam had finished his perfunctory scan for injuries. He was pretty out of it, and our older brother resolved to gently slap his cheeks a couple of times to get him to focus on us and answer the most important questions about his condition.