The Wind Did Go

I’m an arctic fox, one who failed to crest Winter’s Peak. I made it halfway up the mountain before turning back. The headlong wind felt like blade edges all turned inward as they combed through my fur. My lashes had accumulated so much snow that my eyes had almost fused.

Facing downslope, I folded my tail around my feet. The sky was a bleak blanket. The clouds shed so much snow that it seemed like beads of air were ascending through snow rather than the snow falling through air. Visibility was so bad that vision was all but useless—one needing to navigate by foresight and hindsight rather than the sight of eyes.

Alongside me stood a tall man in a shiny coat. He carried a staff, the staff a flame; both carried a message. “Just what did you suppose was over this mountain?” he asked. “Greener grass?”

I didn’t care what was over there. ‘There’ wasn’t here; that’s what mattered.

“This isn’t a problem you’ll outfox with distance.”

I was nothing. A nobody. A drifter, who had but a small ember of self remaining. An ember that was my everything. The world had already taken everything else. This last bit, they would not have. I’d lose it to no one. Would lose it nowhere. Would lose it no how. I just didn’t know how while remaining a part of everyone else’s world.

“You’re like a fish. You saw the water, saw how it was poisoned. And now you mean, to what? Help everyone by swimming ashore and preaching to them about their wayward errors? As an outsider? I dare say they’ve got enough of that already, don’t you?”

I hung my head; it was something I already knew. In truth, it was the real reason I had turned back.

I loped downhill, bounding about the snow without eyes’ aid. Wind howled around me as I considered my problem. The fish couldn’t see the water. How were they to see the poison when they had no concept of what contained that poison?

I kept turning the problem over, and soon, my heart kindled a flame, its light nudging winter’s veil away. My visibility enclosed me like a surrounding shoji. War raged around me, the clash projected onto my screen as shadows.

Bears roared, wolves howled; the two entrenched in melee. Blood spattered my screen. I tread more underfoot; the snow giving way to red-dyed grass.

Wide-eyed white rabbits sped into my domain. I tried to soothe them, but on seeing me, they pivoted and darted elsewhere. So, too, did foxes come and go, no less afraid than the rabbits before them. None could be trusted, everyone risking the consistency of the chaos rather than the prospect of promise—the potential of a willing and able aide.

The fleeing foxes... They were the final straw. If we couldn’t even trust our own...

No! I will not give in to this madness. This fear. I won’t surrender the foxes. Not the wolves. Not the bears. Not even the rabbits!

My flame billowed and climbed. It cut through winter like a shark’s fin traversing troubled waters. Soon, I walked upright as a man, all of winter’s veil dispelled to display the arctic anarchy. The fight wasn’t a clash of species; wolves and bears fought other wolves and bears as much as anyone else.

I waded through death’s valley. The fight flowed past but faltered. Bewildered gawks tore free from quarrels, their quizzical gazes scrutinizing, their curious feet leading them after me. Among them, some sprouted flaming hearts. Among the flames, more humans reclaimed their forms.

The world had been reduced to animals while our shared foe wore a human’s shape. I still didn’t know how to help them see. But I knew our enemy, and I’d no longer allow free passage for his poison.

I touched my chest. Then, my hand came away with a blazing stream like molten steel. I stretched the scorching material into a shaft, forcing all of its heat to a single end, a living flame sprouting there.

I approached the valley’s opposite slope. A hidden figure crouched, my torchlight shedding its human guise. A human-wolf hybrid stood up with antlers rising from its head like a crown. Its fanged maw and razored fingers dripped with blood. It screeched.

I leveled my torch like a spear, an army of torchbearers at my back.

At long last, we would battle our shared foe—the Wendigo.

Constraints:

Word Count: 746/750

Genre: Fantasy

Trope: Slippy Slidey Ice World