300 Days of Writing
Day 51 Ice:
The gelid temperature continued to drop as the team moved further across the ice. The continent that sat at the base of the world felt like an inhospitable planet all its own. The team pushed the dogs hard, their breath fogging before them, drool frothing and freezing against their hair. Condensation from the human’s breath clung to the fuzz on their cheeks, their eyebrows turning white with frost.
“We have to go back. I’m freezing!” the youngest crew member said. Their captain shook their head, and carried on forward. They wiggled their toes in their dog fur boots to make sure they could still feel them. Barely.
“Across the ice. That’s what the contract was.”
“Fuck the contract.” Another man shouted. “We can’t go no deeper.”
“You can!” It was the mother that shouted, her eyes were fierce with an inner fire that they all wished could warm them. “We won’t go back until we’ve saved them.”
“That’s right. We carry on.”
They had lost any sense of land beneath them, their boots slipping across the wet ice, slick with salt water that came up through the cracks. Squinting, their vision was full of aquamarine teals and white, light reflecting off the places of the ice that seemed unnaturally bright, as if the ice was a star itself.
Сайхан Бичээрэй!
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