Hey! What’s the highest price you’ve paid?
It’s time for the second piece of flash fiction in
’s STCKTMBR challenge.I’ll be continuing the story I started last time, so if you missed that, make sure you read it and are caught up:
Unwanted Gesture
Permafrost #1 The Bargain
“There’s no more trees.” I looked at her and she looked at me. We wandered far with humanity’s last hope and final wish.
Today’s prompt is:
Sept 8—The Offering
A gift or sacrifice that changes everything.
Let’s jump right into it!
Permafrost #2 The Offering
I dreamed we died again.
I felt the warmth of my own blood spilling into the frozen Earth. It was as hot as any fire.
When I saw Cristalla’s eyes, I would realize I was dreaming though. For some reason, my mind never got hers right. They were blue, not green.
So I’d laugh. Although it’s better to say the laughter started. It didn’t sound like it came from my body. Then she would cry. Cristalla singing as the siren while the nightmare ate itself alive.
The seconds dragged on for what seemed like hours. Looking up at the endless expanse, the black consumed my soul. All I could do was smile and wait to wake up.
The joke was in how we could only ever imagine what the sky looked like at night. As bad as it was during the day in the white, the black was worse.
Outside the air-tight doors and high above the clouds, I had a vision of the stars spread out in a familiar pattern. But only in my dreams.
Each light shone bright as corners in a crystal net. The cosmic structure holding us in as pressurized prisoners.
We will never pierce those walls.
And that was all we wanted.
That was all we could want.
Not just the desire Cristalla and I shared. The pragmatic goal of our expedition was to find a big enough deposit.
Methane clathrate would solve the fuel shortages. The last of the ships sank more than 50 years ago. Brothers fighting each other until the last drop was drunk.
Fortunately for the rest of us, no one cared about the wastelands in the north. The reward was never deemed to be worth the effort.
Worse than diminishing returns, the initial cost was calculated to eat up any benefit at all.
“Let’s try to pick up the trail again!” Cristalla was always in high spirits. It hid the scars well. A thick line going down our spines. They would only send those with the right credentials on a suicide mission like ours.
“I doubt the flag will still be there.” I was known for a certain dry wit. It had led to more than one of my demotions. The last of which got me trapped in this cage.
Our shelter was built with efficiency in mind, like a carbon compound. We could put it together in less than three hours, connecting the little hexagons until we were safe inside the dome.
Even then, the floor was so cold. We had to spend our time inside on raised platforms to put more distance between our bodies and the permafrost.
“Lathis.” She called out my name and that helped me relax. She was beautiful. Before we suited up and were under the thick layers of coats, I could admire her. “Lathis! You’re bleeding!”
“Damn.” I reached for my back and felt the old wound. The cold dry air made it easy for skin and scars to stiffen to the point of pain. “Well, let’s patch it up. No time to waste waiting for it to stop.”
Maybe it was an excuse to have her touch me.
Maybe she let it happen so we could touch each other.
Either way, we both knew we couldn’t afford to waste time. We spent the last of our reserves on lingering eyes. Our shared desire for something more resting just past our lips.
Then we would be ready to leave and wander through the white.
But we were late that morning.
The moment those doors opened, any attempt to extend the dream was shattered. The hinge wanted to break, it was ready to fly away. The design didn’t account for such wild winds.
The atmosphere had shifted since the last geographical survey. It had been over five generations since a human soul had stepped into the tundra.
It hurt and we lacked the strength and the will to make that first step.
Every day we fought against the inevitable end.
There was nothing out there.
No trees.
No burning ice.
No future.
No hope.
But our mission continued on that path. There was no home to go to unless we found something, anything.
We walked and walked and then walked some more. Every day was the same dream. Hours and hours in the white as we stumbled around, aimlessly.
The rumors of the bounty were never to be trusted.
Desperation makes for a potent motivation.
We were pulled up from a cell. Anyone with the aptitude was meant to focus on those studies. Our forefathers imagined a world that mankind conquered.
We lived in one where nature prevailed.
The discovery wasn’t new. Any scientist worth their expense in rations learned to read the archives. Those who came before already found what we needed. It was all lost under the rubble and dust.
I first met Cristalla at the sentencing. She wasn’t smiling then. We were pulled by the chains digging into our spines.
Convergent evolution was the word used to describe important rediscoveries like ours. We both read about the various hydrocarbons and in the details of some papers were whispers of a miracle in methane clathrate.
A paradox of burning ice with fires of shifting colors. The gas trapped inside was an order of magnitude greater than first theorized.
They cut the chords and set us loose.
“They’ll welcome us as heroes.” I laughed to myself as I thought about the potential for our journey home.
“I know!” Cristalla turned to face me. It was hard to make out most of her face with the fur-lined coat, but I always appreciated seeing her blue eyes. I smiled back. I didn’t think she would hear me with the wind catching our breath in every step. “And finally we can live!”
“You and me?” I kept smiling and she smiled back.
“Always and forever.”
A sudden gust pushed her into me and I put my arms around her. She held me tight and we found warmth in our close bodies. We could survive as long as we were together.
“You’re still bleeding?” She spoke into my coat with stifled tears. She must have felt the warm liquid running down my back.
“It’s nothing.” I tried to reassure her, but I couldn’t let go of her embrace. We couldn’t let go of each other. “Don’t worry about it, Cristalla.”
“Lathis!” She sobbed as she said my name into my ear. We were so close. We were all there was. Just two irregular points in that infinite plane of white.
I saw the map. It was incomplete. The same shapes in the stars and in our shelter. The compounds that made up the clathrate. A hard shell hiding divine providence from mortal sight.
“I don’t feel alive.” Cristalla spoke in prophecies on that fateful afternoon.
“We planted the flag around here.” I pulled her tight, but her arms fell to her side. “We’ll find it soon!”
“I’m sorry… I don’t feel alive anymore.” She looked up at me with those clear blue eyes. I thought I saw them turn green, but I was sure we weren’t in a dream. “That’s what I meant to say.”
“Cristalla!” I shouted her name as her body went limp. “We have to make it to the parade! They’ll welcome us as heroes! Cristalla! Cristalla stay with me!"
She was so heavy. Our coats were so thick. I couldn’t keep my grip on her and she fell to the frozen ground with a soft thud.
“Cristalla!” I reached down to touch her, but my back was already bleeding. The movement stretched my skin and drops of red seeped down my arm, dripping onto her beautiful, still face.
Drop, drop, drop.
One, two, three.
They splashed on her skin and her eye must have twitched. The green told me I was still asleep.
I would never accept she was gone.
My body stopped moving and the wind threw dust on my thoughts. The white was all there was. Nothing in this wretched world but an empty fog.
Even my screams were carried away faster than I could hear them.
And so, it was all the more surprising when I heard a sound at all.
The Earth beneath our feet igniting in hellfire. That same green color burning into the atmosphere.
I grabbed Cristalla’s dead weight and tried to wake her up again.
“We found it!” I raised her hand up like she had helped me do so many times before. “We really did it. This is the hot ice! We’re walking on a huge deposit of methane clathrate!”
I watched as the familiar lattice filled my vision. The crystallized structure and its caged bounty. The pattern repeated everywhere. Across the maps, in the stars, the walls of our shelter, and the horrors penetrating our minds.
She would have smiled at the idea of her colorful soul being the key.
Continue reading: Permafrost #3 The Threshold “Khlumnus Hodoratus”
Obvious Path
In some ways, I feel like I wrote myself into a corner by forcing an emotional sacrifice, but who’s to say what hurts and what’s final?
I don’t like a cheap death, but I’m also not a fan of contrived survival.
There’s certainly a balance — one I’ve tried to find in my story. Although, I feel like I let the prompt guide me a little too much.
That’s okay though, all things considered.
And we still have two more to go!
Who knows where Lathis and Cristalla may eventually end up?
Until next time,
—JMB