Gifted Pelt

Chapter 16

When Astrila's eyes snap open to morning, her biological clock waking her even without the light of dawn, her ears are met with an empty, stifling silence. She frowns and looks over to Kōri. He is still sleeping, but it is a lighter sleep, indicating that his body has begun the ascent from sleep. Astrila is unsettled by the lack of sounds from the world around her, shaking her head and rubbing at her ears. She still can't hear anything from outside, not the whistling wind, the chatter of waking selkies, or the crunch of disturbed tlacringit. For a moment, she is afraid that she has gone deaf, but then Kōri lets out a long, loud sigh, the sound reverberating around the iglu.

Astrila giggles in amusement and relief, but then she frowns once more. The sounds in the iglu have an eerie quality to them, like an echo in a cave on the cliffs. They shouldn't be echoing, they should have escaped out into the world through the open door of the iglu. She puts a hand to her belt pouch, feeling the knives nestled within. Her ulu is nestled flat against the bottom of the pouch, and her snow knife is above it, tucked in beside her snow goggles. Astrila shakes her head again to dismiss her worrying thoughts and steps over to the entrance of the iglu. There is intla in the entrance once again, but there is a more pressing matter.

There is a wall of snow blocking the single entrance to the iglu, and blocking out all sound as well. Astrila sighs and pulls out her snow knife, beginning the process of carving out chunks of the snow trapping them inside. Slowly, so slowly, she carves out a tunnel a bit at a time, moving upwards towards the top of the snow layer. There is a groan from behind her and she stops, stepping back to look at how far she had carved up. Her tunnel had just passed the normal opening to the iglu, the same point where Kōri felt pain from her distance the last time. Astrila sets her snow knife down and turns back towards the inner room of the iglu. On her way over to Kōri, she grabs a strip of meat from the food basket. There is another groan from Kōri, but this one is not a groan of pain. He stretches and opens his eyes, rearing back when he sees Astrila crouching beside him.

"Okay? Hi."

"It's about time you woke up!"

Kōri frowns. "What do you mean?"

Astrila grins. "You were so exhausted from all that running last night that you fell asleep while standing and fell on the floor. I had to carry you up here."

He bolts up into a sitting position. "The storm! Are we still in the middle of it?"

Astrila shrugs. "I have no idea, and it will be a while until we find out."

"Why?" At last, he notices the eerie silence from outside. "Why is it so quiet?"

Astrila sighs and tugs him to his feet, bringing him over to the iglu entrance. "We're snowed in."

"Oh." He notices Astrila's tunnel. "How long have you been up?"

"Not long, why?"

"You've made a fair bit of progress."

She lets out a tiny bark of laughter and shakes her head. "Not really. I've just barely passed the original entrance."

"Do you need my help?"

Astrila's face lights up. "Please."

He steps back a bit to grab his own snow knife from his storage and positions himself at her side. Together, their progress on the tunnel is faster, but not by much. They gain centimeter by centimeter, one chunk of snow at a time. Kōri has to leave at one point to grab some food, trying to soothe his growling stomach. He brings a strip of meat over to Astrila and she stops her work to lean against the smooth wall of the iglu and nibble on the bit of food. The moment the last bit makes its way down her throat, she is up again, snow knife in her hand.

The snow layer goes up and up and up, the tunnel following it all the way, curving around the walls of the iglu. Dread starts to sink into her as they continue carving their way up through the layer, past the first layer of snow bricks, the second, the third. When her snow knife breaks through the snow to reach the air, just above the fourth layer, she almost sobs in relief. If the snow had covered the iglu ventilation or was about to . . . they would be doomed. Instead of using her snow knife for this last bit, she punches through the top of the layer with her hand, grinning broadly. The tunnel is finally opened, only for Astrila to be surrounded by the same mix of krotla and tlapinti. She curses at the wind biting her face and burrows back inside the tunnel, calling down to Kōri.

"The storm is still going! Can you pass up all the snow down there? I'm going to try to shelter the tunnel entrance so we don't get snowed in again."

He doesn't respond verbally, instead pushing mound after mound of snow up through the tunnel. She takes all the mounds and shoves them outside the tunnel to clear space for more. He finally calls up the tunnel to her, his voice echoing, when he has sent up the last mound.

"That's all of them!"

"Thanks!"

Astrila pokes her head back outside the tunnel to look at all the mounds. The wind pushes her hood back and tries to rip her coat away, but she fights back, wrapping the coat tightly around her. Using her snow knife, she packs the mounds of snow together into bricks before spiraling and stacking them together into the appearance of a normal iglu entrance. She still has some snow bricks left, so she scowls and scurries out of the protection of the tunnel. Astrila clambers up to the top of the igluvijaq, snow bricks in hand, and begins to make a second bit of shelter around the ventilation shaft and the smoke it sends swirling up into the stormy sky from the fire down below.
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This storm is going to be pretty bad, isn't it? What do you think is going to happen? How long will it go on for? Tell me your thoughts!

On a different, non-book related note, how are you guys doing right now? With all the quarantines and the virus? I've been stuck in my house for a month and I'm still stressing out about school-related stuff, but I'm okay other than that.

Happy reading, and I'll see you next chapter!

~Goddess of Fate, signing out.