taxonomites | Moar Snowwww

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Moar Snowwww

The snow has gone from a winter storm to something truly impressive. Ground-level doors are nearly buried in it; windows reveal walls of solid white pressing against the glass. Chimneys have iced over, and cars are buried in deep drifts.

The trams stopped running two days ago, with polite notes reading Temporarily Out of Service - We Apologize for Any Inconvenience affixed to the frozen doors.

Taxon is very quiet.

The Extras huddle indoors, and the streets are long white swathes of virgin snow. No car horns, no hum of traffic. The river is iced as well, and the edges of the shore boast chunks of white ice floating in the black water.

Near the Sanctuary, a water main has burst in the night, and the day's slight increase in temperature thawed it enough to erupt and flood a street. The buildings of that street are hung with sheets of icicles, gleaming like someone's idea of a Christmas decoration taken beyond all reason.

The wind blows from the north, and skirls the snow into further drifts and piles. If you listen-- if you listen very carefully-- you can hear the sound of voices on the wind, and howls that cut as keenly as the Arctic wind.

If you must go outside, Taxonians, breathe slowly and carefully-- for an incautious breath can freeze the very lining of your throat.

And at night...? Well, tonight the howls become more than distantly-imagined sounds: tonight, white shapes stalk Taxon's white streets-- wolves the size of ponies, whose eyes flicker with blue fire and who are hungry for warm meat.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Early morning, Wyatt Cain's name pops up on everyone's screen at literally the same time. Should people choose to view his message, they'll see a pale, haggard-looking man instead of the usually bright-eyed, sometimes even rosy-cheeked man (especially in this weather). Behind him is the unmistakable walls of the birdhouse, and further in the background those with keen ears will pick up the tinny sounds of classical music.

Cain's eyes seem hollow, and the skin around them might even seem taut, if you know what to look for. But in this light - no natural light available now - anyone will seem a touch worse for wear than they are.

When he speaks, it's apparent that he doesn't just look tired, he sounds it too. "Hi, everyone. Looks like the snow isn't stopping any time soon. Since it seems to be coming from the Northern district, I think it's fairly safe to say this is another one of the aliens' ideas of fun and games.

"Having said that, cold weather can be dangerous enough on its own. If you feel unsafe in your own home, there's plenty of room here at the birdhouse. If you need help getting here, just let myself or Paul Smecker know. And if you're more or less unaffected by the weather," lucky son-of-a-gun, his tone suggests, "your help in collecting supplies or escorting people to safety will be dearly appreciated. In the meantime, please try to stay safe. Don't go outside on your own if you can avoid it."

"Hey, uh-- hey."

Jeremy gives an awkward wave at the tablet, hunkered in his parka and looking extremely uncertain about everything.

"I, uh-- I've been sleeping at the big white building but-- but there isn't any food. I guess I come to where you are on the map?"

Jeremy is not coping terribly well with all of this. This is one really persistent video game/dream, it keeps going, day by day, it keeps going, and he isn't waking up and the snow is-- the word none of them are saying is that the snow is fuckin' scary, it's like some survivalist horror thing, getting trapped in Alaska somewhere with bears eating your face and running out of food and you're supposed to be call the National Guard or something but there's no National Guard here, and no cops, and nothing touchstoney. And a lot of the people are fucking weird.

So if the face on the tablet looks a little shaky, a cigarette clamped between his lips that he lit off the last one, well, Jeremy Fischer's having a bad couple of weeks, okay.

Wyatt gives Jeremy a threadbare smile, and a firmer nod. He's cleared a path from the door to the street outside and tried keeping it that way, but he's beginning to think it's a losing battle. Just the same, there's no use telling people they can come here if the entrance is cut off by mounds of snow. "It isn't far," he tells him, though it might as well be with the weather.

"I'll come meet you. See if you can find some outerwear somewhere. There's a gym and a pool a few floors up, maybe someone's left something behind. I'll bring what I can. Don't go outside until you see me, okay?"

"Mmm... 'kay, I'll look," says Jeremy. He is secretly (or not so secretly) relieved that someone's coming to help get him. He may not really understand the dangers of deep snow but he still doesn't want to go out in it on his own.

"I got this parka. It's pretty warm. I spent three hundred on it so it had better be. Um. I'll head on down to the lobby. ...Thanks, by the way."

"You'll need gloves, or something to protect your hands," he relates, a voice of calm reason in times of stress. "Trust me. Your hands and your face are the most exposed. If you can find some sort of glasses or goggles, that'd be even better."

As he talks, he moves, clipping the tablet to his bracelet like a chronometer. Duffel, spare scarf, spare hat, gloves? Gloves, gloves, gloves. As he rifles through the things he brought to the birdhouse, he calls over his shoulder to Paul, telling him Fischer needs help, and that if he doesn't check in on the tablet in half an hour, get backup.

"That goes for you too, Jeremy," he says directly to the tablet and the tiny screen. "If I'm not there in thirty, you stay put, and give Smecker a call."

~*~

It's ten minutes by foot between the Sanctuary and the birdhouse on a clear summer's day. Trudging through snow is a completely different matter. He doesn't have snow shoes, but he does have copious outdoorsy skills, courtesy of his training. He may not have much in the way of actual, hands-on experience with this type of climate, but he knows how to read the snow. He knows the treacherous sparkle of snow that has crusted over, the top layer seeming sturdy enough to walk on. Sometimes it is, but most often it will crack, and the snow beneath it will do nothing at all to keep you from sinking.

He knows to look for the densely packed snow, and to take one step at a time. There's a stretch at the intersection at the middle point between the buildings where he has to pack the snow himself. One foot at a time, pressing over and over into the same knee-deep hole to make sure it's steady enough to shift your weight on. You don't want to get your foot stuck, or worse, lose your boot to the piles of stark white.

When he does approach the Sanctuary entrance, he's more covered in snow than not, and the sun that here and there sifts through the gray and white skies reflect dully in the black lenses of an old pair of oversized sun glasses. That they've mostly fogged over isn't directly apparent until he comes stumbling into the lobby.

He pushes them up, and pulls his green scarf from his nose and mouth, breathing heavily. Just give him a sec.

Re: [visual]

kings_fool - 2013-03-15 09:10 (UTC) - Expand

There are more than four feet of snow on the ground. By most human beings' standards, that's an unpleasant preponderance of snow.

Accordingly, it takes Horst several minutes to clear all the snow off of the upper staircase and the widow's walk, sending it tumbling off the roof and down into the side yard. Snow's still falling, silent and gentle and balletic, but it's good to be able to get outside at least a small way, after a few days cooped up indoors. Being shut in tends to put Horst in a poor mood. And he's been meanining to have a better look at what's going on outside.

When he's satisfied that the deck and railings are cleared off sufficiently, Horst picks his way back down the stairs and into the top floor of their peculiar house, shaking some of the snow out of his hair and the ice out of his fingertips. It's a cold night indeed.

"Johannes," he calls, loudly enough to carry a few floors to wherever his brother might be at the moment. "Come up here a moment and have a look at this."

The house is quiet, save the distant hum of the washing machine (Johannes's favorite innovation of the modern world so far, by far) and the whistle of the winter wind. Horst receives no immediate sign that Johannes heard him at all, but that doesn't mean anything, of course; Johannes comes when called only at his own leisure, when he feels like it, if he feels like it, and damned if he's going to drop what he's doing and come running unless he hears an explosion.

He does turn up a few minutes later with a cup of coffee, looking skeptical. The skepticism vanishes when he looks Horst over and glances out the window, replaced with the sort of even sobriety that tends to characterize him in any mildly worrisome situation.

"You look cold," he remarks.

"Well, I am cold," Horst answers him, shrugging. "It won't kill me." And it won't, at that; Horst can feel heat and cold, can even register them -- generally -- as pleasant or unpleasant, but they won't cause him much harm until they become extreme, and rarely the kind of harm that he can't heal from. Such are the perks of being undead.

"Come on up to the roof," Horst tells him again, more clearly this time. "It's a good view out onto the neighborhood." He holds up a heavy cotton-stuffed comforter from one of the guest beds, and wraps it around his brother's shoulders for extra warmth as he steers him outside and up onto the stairs that lead up to the widow's walk. It's best, he's learned, to get moving on things before Johannes can notice anything undignified might be going on, and definitely never to mention anything undignified aloud.

"I saw something moving out there."

"By something, I take it you don't mean something human," Johannes muses. True to prediction, he ignores the comforter, treating it like an extra-heavy coat that has somehow materialized on his person. The night air is extremely cold: his tolerance for the cold has always been stiffer than his tolerance for heat, which is highly inconvenient for a person who prefers to be as clothed as possible at nearly all times, but this is biting and uncomfortable.

He bundles his left hand up in the heavy material and uses his right to tilt his spectacles up over his forehead and squint into the darkness. "By 'something,'" he asks, "are we talking something approximately closer to, say, polar bears, or frost giants?"

Horst stands shoulder to shoulder with Johannes, putting himself between his brother and the winter wind. "Small polar bears. Or very small frost giants." He points to a moving shadow in the pale, diffuse glow of the cloud-blocked moon. "See there, atop that snow, by the Scheaffers' house? You can see one of them poking around the windows. Wolves, I think. And there are more of them."

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