[SE] the quiet view

this is the reckoning

He ran.

Freedom and liberation in the semblance of cold, frigid air billowing across fur – ferocious angles on glacier tips, ice melding and molding beneath paws, and it was the epitome of deliverance. A providential spree as long limbs gallivanted and Belial hooted somewhere nearby, Zuriel following close at hand, becoming bonded mercenaries on their plunge into independence. At some point it was purpose driven, but not initially, when the gales swept downward from the summits and he could be lost in the desolate thicket of memories – from years and lives ago – to now, heralding nothing more than a long, illustrious, triumphant howl.

Eventually they pressed and slowed upon the Sea of Glass, where his eyes ghosted over the range of frozen bubbles – delicate, fragile. He neared, but didn’t touch, nose drifting downward, instead opting for silent apologies to a shrine – a reason precise and clear but never vocalized, before threading his way towards where there must’ve been cracks months and seasons ago. Where an ancient creature had been mauled. Where a battle had taken place. Where a relic had been found – but now it was just endless white upon white, and his Stygian figure stood out along its surface.

DEIMOS

wolf image credit

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.