The White Horizon: Prologue


If only I had a time machine to go back and clasp my paw around my own 17 year old back and say: "There's no point to this, he's going to die, it’ll all go to shit."

If only...

I loved Nick, but I honestly wished I could have done that. I wanted to stop all this pain. Not just the physical aspect of the snow slowly soaking through the legs of my thick snowpants as I kneeled over his body, but the pain of losing him forever to the ice and snow that had already taken so many lives.
The snow is whipping all around me, trying to consume me and Nick. The husky’s corpse is already halfway covered by the whiteness that is everywhere.

Now, Nick’s beautiful blue eyes have looked their last. They're still looking up at me, even through the winter I can see the foggy eyes of the man I once loved. I move my paw to close them, ignoring the fact that his fur has already turned stiff like icicles. I remember the way his blue had looked into my green in terror when I held his paws in mine as his body slowly gave way to succumbing cold and fatigue. The first few moments after he stopped breathing I tried desperately to wake him up, doing everything to try and see life in those blue eyes that I had taken for granted. My tears became his eulogy, the snow was his coffin, and these brief seconds were his funeral. I could see two tiny bulbs of ice, that had once been his tears. Mine were falling onto him as fast as the snow around me is now.

"Come on, we need to keep moving Finn!" I heard someone behind me say through the loud winds and stinging snow.

I rummaged through Nick's coat which had begun to freeze to his lifeless body, it was slowly and surely becoming part of him.

"Come on, come on, where is it? Where the hell is it?!" I screamed against the storm.

I felt a paw on my shoulder and I shuddered, briefly turning around to see Clay the only coyote in our group of survivors. I quickly looked into his piercing and somewhat calculating eyes, then looked back down at Nick. Another brief glance at the coyote revealed that his brown-grey fur was speckled with white.
"Finn we need to move now." The canine said.

"Will you just give me a second!" I snapped, trying not to let the coyote see the tears in my eyes.
There is white as far as my eyes can see and the snow cuts into my skin like knives. My fur doing very little to keep it from piercing and biting at my skin. I try fervently to find the picture, but it is not there. I hold back my tears knowing now they will freeze at this temperature. I kneel over his corpse and for a fleeting moment I forget about the snow and think of the love we shared for one another.

"Hurry up, Finn we're moving now!" Clay yelled interrupting my thoughts.

Silently I got up from Nick’s corpse, brushing off the snow from my now wet pants. I adjusted my pack and began to follow Clay and the rest of the group. Onwards towards the White Horizon and away from my only form of escape. The only way away from this hell. I solemnly looked back at the bump in the distance that had once been my partner’s corpse. I adjusted my pack again and started to do what I’ve been doing for years now: walk.

Comments