Work Text:
White Thunder
June 2021...
Out of all of Sensei's postings, Alaska was Mako's least favorite. On one hand, it was the site of the Jaeger Academy, object of all of Mako's ambitions and hopes from her earliest days with him.
On the other hand...it was so cold and dark!
The Northern Lights were very pretty, as was the snow when it blanketed the ground, but Mako preferred Lima and Hawaii. She both looked forward to and dreaded the day that she might be asked to join him at one of the Japan Shatterdomes.
But he was commanding officer of Anchorage Shatterdome, so most often it was easiest for Mako to visit him there. After her classes were finished for the spring 2021 semester, rather than wait for Sensei to have time off, Tamsin arranged to meet them there.
"We have an outing planned," she told Mako at the airport. "After that we'll head back to Hawaii."
"An outing in Alaska?" Mako asked, doubtful. "Won't it be cold?"
"Cold enough for a jacket, but it's spring now. You haven't had the chance to see it at this time of year."
"But I was here in the spring, five years ago," said Mako.
Maybe that was the real reason that Mako felt uneasy in Alaska. It was the first place Sensei had taken her in those numb, gray months after Onibaba. He had adopted her from the orphanage, and she'd felt very grateful and fortunate, but everything had still been so...dark. Empty. Her mother and father had vanished so suddenly in a world of gray ash, screams, fire, and monsters. So soon after, it had been hard for Mako to understand anything about her surroundings except that she was here in a place and her mother and father weren't.
Since then, people talked about Alaska as still being a very pretty place. Sensei and Tamsin both seemed to admire it. Maybe she should give it a second chance.
Instead of the Shatterdome, they met Sensei at the landing strip and loaded their bags at once onto a small plane. "Where are we going?" Mako asked curiously.
"Juneau," said Tamsin. "And then somewhere Stacks and I've always wanted to see."
Juneau was a striking place, a surprisingly small town cut deep between some of the biggest mountains Mako had ever seen. Enormous bald eagles soared overhead and perched on fence posts as they drove along the water to the docks. Waterfalls danced down the slopes until they met the sea. The water was cold, as was the wind when it blew, but the grasses were dotted with wildflowers.
She hadn't expected them to be taking a boat, but they boarded a vessel at the docks that had several decks, like the ferries between Kodiak Island and Anchorage, only meant more for people to relax. A national park ranger came on board to tell them all about what they'd see. "Tourism is down thanks to the kaiju. Some people do still want to see Alaska."
"What are we going to see?" she asked once they’d set out.
"Glacier Bay," said Sensei.
It had been years since she'd imagined doing anything on the water for fun. But the ride was peaceful. It was chilly on the decks when the boat was moving fast, but she and Tamsin and Sensei drank hot tea and gazed up at the mountains and waterfalls.
Once they saw a mother bear leading three cubs across a wide patch of snow, and one of the crew loaned Mako a pair of binoculars so she could look closer. Fishing boats cruised out through the bays alongside them, and Mako loved watching the seagulls land on the railing as if to beg for a handout.
She and Sensei watched one bird with a long tail fighting with another over the fish he'd caught. "Do you know what that is?"
"Isn't it a seagull?"
"No. That," Sensei pointed to the long-tailed bird, "is called a jaeger." He grinned at the look of astonishment on her face.
The jaeger was no bigger than any of the other seabirds, but as Mako watched, she could see that it clearly knew how to fight. Eventually, it caught the fish that the seagull had dropped, and soared off in triumph.
Otters dove and swirled in pairs in front of the boat, and sometimes floated on their backs with their paws in the air, making Mako giggle. Sea lions bellowed at the boat and flopped on the rocks.
She gasped when an enormous whale breached the surface and hurled itself through the air before landing with a massive splash. People crowded on the decks of the boat to watch as the whale breached again and again.
"That's a humpback whale," the park ranger told her. "They were very endangered, close to extinct. Ironically, since the kaiju came along, they've started recovering."
"Why is that?"
"People don't want to risk being on the water to hunt them."
Mako watched the whale thoughtfully. She'd seen pictures and read about them, but never quite grasped just how big and majestic they were. She caught Tamsin looking at her. "I never want to be glad of anything that comes from the kaiju," she admitted in Japanese.
"This doesn't come from the kaiju," Tamsin replied. "Whales and wildlife come from Earth. They've just managed to take something back from the invaders."
"That's why we wanted to come now," Sensei added. "To remember that good things come from the ocean. My sister Luna always wanted to see a glacier. She didn't have the chance."
"Then it's good we're getting to do it for her," said Mako, switching back to English.
Clouds rolled fast over the sky, but then the sun would burst through and light up the snow on the mountains to brilliance. Sometimes the boat was so close to the shore that Mako could smell the evergreen trees, and thought if she leaned far enough out, she could put her hand in the waterfalls that splashed over the rocks. Before they even reached the first of the glaciers, she'd lost count of the number of waterfalls. They formed spiderweb shapes over the rocks beneath the snow drifts.
At first glance, the glaciers didn't seem so much to look at - just patches of white atop and in between the mountains. "Those are just mountain glaciers," said the park ranger. "You'll see the good ones when we get into the inlets. Once this entire bay was underneath a huge sheet of ice. All of those mountains and rock formations were carved by the glaciers. See the rock beaches? Those are moraines that the glaciers left behind."
"It's beautiful," Mako whispered. Little tuft-eared birds floated along on the water in front of them, unconcerned even by the bellowing sealions and the diving gulls. Tufted puffins, according to the park ranger’s bird book.
Sensei and Tamsin leaned against the railing beside Mako, gazing at the mountains and the birds and seeming at peace with the world. Mako agreed; somehow it seemed as if the kaiju and the war were far away.
Finally, they reached their objective far down an inlet that seemed too narrow for some of the ships. "It's eight hundred feet deep in some places," said the ranger. "All carved out by glaciers."
Ice flowed in chunks and gigantic icebergs through the water, but the boat pilots expertly navigated between them, like a bigger version of the little birds that drifted peacefully alongside. At last, they approached what Mako realized wasn't snow or rock, but a massive cliff of ice, in white, silver and blue, forming pillars and spires and crags even taller than the highest mast of the boats. Everyone fell into silence, except for soft "oohs" and "aahs" as they drifted closer.
"This is the Margerie Glacier," said the park ranger. "It's twenty-one miles long, all the way from the top of the mountains."
And it was, as Mako looked up, a great highway made of ice and snow that wound its way up into the rocks, hundreds of feet wide. It made her think of Scramble Alley in a Shatterdome, only made of ice.
Down near the waterline, there were deep blue caves, and beautiful bands like carved wax candles in gray and blue and white. "Keep watching," said the ranger. "It's very active. Pieces will calve off."
Mako couldn't hold back a squeak. "Isn't that dangerous?"
"We're far enough back. The natives who lived in this area centuries ago called it white thunder. You wouldn't want to get much closer than this. The ice might not fall on you, but the waves would be big."
Pieces of ice did tumble off the glacier's face into the water, but they weren't that big - maybe the size of a snowball. Waterfalls gushed straight out of the glacier into the water, and it was cold enough that Mako might have wanted to go inside if the sight before her hadn't been so beautiful.
It was like a castle, with faintly-glowing towers and spires in the dim sunlight. When the sun went behind the clouds, the blue ice was even deeper. There was a rush of ice and water off the side of one of the pillars that made the onlookers gasp and whisper, but it wasn't the huge crash Mako had anticipated - just a small avalanche.
Sensei pointed next to it. "Look at that. It's going to break." Mako saw what he was watching; a frosty, pale blue pillar, easily as tall at the boat, was tilting at an awkward angle out from the glacier. Seagulls were fishing in the rushing water below, but they seemed to be giving it a wide berth. Soon more ice and snow gushed off the other side of the pillar, making it seem to stick out even further like a giant blue thumb.
"Is it going to fall?!" she demanded.
"Be patient!" Sensei urged.
Tamsin got cold enough to go back inside for a cup of tea, but Mako was afraid to take her eyes off the pillar. Soon the cold air was split by sharp cracks, and Mako kept checking to see if Tamsin was back yet. “She’s going to miss it!”
“Come on, Tam!” Sensei called.
People yelped in excitement, and it was all Mako could do not to jump up and down at the sound of each creak and crack as the pillar leaned just a little further away from the glacier’s face.
Finally, Tamsin came running back up the deck and elbowed her way to Mako and Sensei’s sides. “Any minute now!” said the park ranger.
Three more sharp cracks rang out, then all the watchers on the deck shouted in delight as the creaks and cracks gave way to a deep rumble, and the pillar tipped and tilted slowly away from the rest of the glacier, then toppled into the water with a tremendous splash. Sensei’s grip around Mako’s shoulders tightened, but she was busy “oooh”ing along with everyone else.
The pillar bobbed like a giant blue cork in front of the boat, but true to the park ranger’s word, the waves it generated only rocked them gently. Soon the pillar was rolling like a log, over and over as the current of the sea pulled it away from the glacier to become a new iceberg.
Mako looked back in delight and saw Sensei looking at her in concern. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, relaxing. Mako frowned, and he admitted in Japanese, “I didn’t expect it to be so loud. I was worried it might have scared you.”
“Oh. No, it didn’t scare me. It doesn’t sound anything like kaiju. It was more like thunder.” Blue or not, Mako felt as if she was in a place far away from any kaiju’s reach. “I’m glad we came here. It’s beautiful.” It was everything the kaiju hadn’t been able to touch.
Eventually, the boat had to move away from the glacier to make way for other boats and ships and people who were still trying to get a glimpse of the place. Mako looked back at the iceberg still rolling on its course out to see among the birds and felt a funny impulse to wave, or just whisper goodbye.
There are still beautiful things that live in the ocean, she thought, watching the otters and sea lions gliding along in the boat’s wake. They were still guided by rangers and escorted by jaegers.
~Fin~