Work Text:
The cadence of the crickets chirping in the night air is set in front of a sky painted in whirls of navy brushed through with a light patina of lavender and glimpses of emerald. The soft snowy ground reflects the light, gleaming different shades from different angles and when it is looked upon at the correct angle it exhumes radiance, gleaming like a thousand gemstones have been dropped from the sky.
Light paws dance across the ground, leaving but the barest imprints in the snow. The beast hurtles across the icy wasteland, easily avoiding the slippery patches in its quest to find its destination. Its fur is beset with crystals, rippling with those angles as it blows backward against the breeze, a field of starlight tamed to its masters' whim, an invisible comb sliding through the tiny strands of vitality and giving it texture.
The animal slows as it nears its destination, the hairs sliding into their normal position, and it stands so proudly on a cliff top, thousands of feet in the air. The wind is paused, and with that momentary lapse the waves so far below take that opportunity and slam in great impetuous roils against the frigid structure. The entire glacier seems to quake and the mighty king of the hill pauses atop his remote kingdom.
As the waves slide backward in an attempt to regain their strength, the undertow pulls with it hundreds of shining fish, revealing the life that remains hidden from the tundra around it. The predator decides this is where he will discover his meal, and so he trundles in his lax way down a path to the side of the sheer slope, taking his time because he knows that no other would dare to get in his way. He may also be patient because the breeze has had another lapse.
He reaches a small ledge and studies the innocuous water.
So fast the movement could not be tracked by any other creature, he slams a majestic paw beneath the waves, bubbles in a rapid stream rising around that white paw with the black imprints, and tears it out in a fight to receive his next meal. As that fist rises it brings with it many unblemished fish, the silage of the Arctic so common the gleaming animals are.
He doesn't dare eat them. Not yet, when he is not the only one who must consume them.
He runs across the tundra, a monster in the eyes of so many gone horsewild, as he returns to the cave he calls home.
He sidles into the cavern and seeing a warm fire shifts over to its location. He deposits the evening catch next to the fire.
The woman is dressed in leather- not the patent-leather we purchase in stores, but leather found from skins, bound with cord, and draped in fur to provide maximum warmth. She sees her furry companion who, seeing her smile, curls up by the fire.
In that cave, outpuffing smoke from the barest flicker of flame, the polar bear and the woman relax against the other in a desperate attempt to keep safe for yet another night.