Whoosh

The gusts are almost too much for your meager footing. The ridge twenty feet above, now so very close, still holds your attention close. A warm orange glow guides you as you brace yourself again against the icy slope. The sun is on the other side too. You haven’t seen it yet this morning, the rays will start leaning into the crevasse around ten. 

You look back. The clear air cannot block the distance. There are thousands of other mountains, millions, just like this one. The same three shallow peaks are mirrored around you for as far as you can see, set atop cloned bases that would dwarf entire cities. These peaks are white but with thick, dark veins where the rock protrudes, clawing off its wispy blanket.

You move now, frightened by the void below. You grunt and swing, then finally reach an arm over the powdery spine and catch your breath. You don’t look down. It would make you sick and you know it. You don’t look out for the same reason. You would be as disoriented and unsettled by the rough tessellation on the horizon as you would looking into a bottomless pit. Besides, you ask yourself, why would I look away from this?

Your eyes are fixed on the source of that warm glow. Your right arm, still wielding a gleaming icepick, hangs over the barrier and supports your weight. You shake tinted goggles off of your face and wince at the cold.

The fire doesn’t move. Its soft light radiates over the frozen stone blade, warming it with a tight sunset halo. The mountains, pleased to receive this gift, offer it solid purchase. The flame’s tendrils do not lick their vanilla sky. Each branch is paused eerily, dispelling the illusion of flatness seen in an animated crimson agent. Instead, the few branches each reach upwards with width and breadth. This pleases the eyes.

These branches look eager to encircle one another; they would were they not petrified. Tails reach up and begin to curl subtly around one another from the fire’s rounded base. They can’t come much closer together. The smooth curves are not enough to unite any of these frosty pillars, and they twist twist like June grass under gentle wind.

A cool sheath covers the flaming spires, granting the nearby peaks clemency from their infernal gaze. It’s all very well contained. The shape is preserved and the orange glory shines through its cerulean-sapphire, diaphanous complement. There, too, are small orbs. Bubbles fused between the layers of fire and ice, some are twice the size of the rest. They give a pale brightness to the orange and blue ornament atop the mountain. These also catch the sun and redistribute its light to anybody nearby who is willing to accept it.

You are even more careful now than before. Every move is thoughtful and calculated. You are worried less about your uncomfortable grip on the frigid wedge than the fragility of your subject. The flame mustn’t be handled roughly, you know. If the ice shatters, your pick would fester and revert to slag. Your layered clothes would hastily unwind and form a messy pile of cotton and wool. The metal spikes on your shoes would meet the same fate as the ice pick and nobody knows what would happen to the rubber. Faster than you could draw a final breath, the mountains around you would slide away, all in different directions, and you would find yourself in a damp cave, badly bruised and slowly warming over a whispering pyre. You moan, it moans. You moan, it moans.