Tal didn't run.
But the dogs did, and Tal balanced on the sled's runners, leaning into the elegant curves of their trail as Bell's route took them around obstacles hidden beneath the snow and found the safest ground. It was a trip they'd taken many times before, and only the youngest pair of dogs on the team hadn't learned it yet. The wind blew through fur and layered scarves, cold as Halo was always cold, but not yet the murderous temperatures it would reach in a few more weeks.
They flew along above the white until they reached the ice, blue and green and dusted with the snow that slid across it unceasingly so long as the wind blew. Bell slowed without needing Tal's direction, and the team fell from their usual traveling speed down to a slower trot, allowing the courier to look around, studying the ice bubbles and the shapes that sometimes loomed up from the flat and frozen waste; ancient stones, once, now caked in ice and snow so thick that their hearts were hidden within their frozen tombs.
They weren't what he was looking for, but they marked a stretch that might once have been a shore, and Tal continued to follow them, hoping to find some irregularity this time, some hint of an ancient light house or tower that still poked above the layers of ice that had grown so thickly over the ancient ocean.
But when he finally saw something, it wasn't what he had expected. Far, far out on the ice in the distance: peryton he knew. A unicorn he didn't. And a fiery hound that had never known a collar or a harness, Tal was willing to bet.
He turned the team to head fully onto the ice, abandoning the shore, and when he was close enough to be heard--
"Deimos?" Tal called, a little uncertainty in his voice.
But the dogs did, and Tal balanced on the sled's runners, leaning into the elegant curves of their trail as Bell's route took them around obstacles hidden beneath the snow and found the safest ground. It was a trip they'd taken many times before, and only the youngest pair of dogs on the team hadn't learned it yet. The wind blew through fur and layered scarves, cold as Halo was always cold, but not yet the murderous temperatures it would reach in a few more weeks.
They flew along above the white until they reached the ice, blue and green and dusted with the snow that slid across it unceasingly so long as the wind blew. Bell slowed without needing Tal's direction, and the team fell from their usual traveling speed down to a slower trot, allowing the courier to look around, studying the ice bubbles and the shapes that sometimes loomed up from the flat and frozen waste; ancient stones, once, now caked in ice and snow so thick that their hearts were hidden within their frozen tombs.
They weren't what he was looking for, but they marked a stretch that might once have been a shore, and Tal continued to follow them, hoping to find some irregularity this time, some hint of an ancient light house or tower that still poked above the layers of ice that had grown so thickly over the ancient ocean.
But when he finally saw something, it wasn't what he had expected. Far, far out on the ice in the distance: peryton he knew. A unicorn he didn't. And a fiery hound that had never known a collar or a harness, Tal was willing to bet.
He turned the team to head fully onto the ice, abandoning the shore, and when he was close enough to be heard--
"Deimos?" Tal called, a little uncertainty in his voice.
