He blasts down the hill on his skis and lets out a holler of pure joy. The snow rushes past beneath him in a blinding blur, and the wind whips at his faces and eyes. He wishes that there had been a pair of goggles in the rucksack across from the doorway in the hold of the submarine, but at least there had been a jacket and gloves and hat, not to mention retractable ski poles.
He is racing down a mountain between two stands of trees that give way to a deep valley sided by immense ridges of grey rock. The sun casts overhead across a clear blue sky, now distant from him, the way he remembers the sun to be. As he glides into the valley he notices that the slope is starting to even out. After a while he can see that the surface beneath him has given way from snow to ice, and he realizes that he is skiing down a canal of sorts.
Birds cast high overhead, breaking way from the cliffs above. As he continues onward, he finds himself thinking he might need cross country skis, but the slope is still in his favour, as is the wind, and so he can keep moving just by pushing the poles into the ice.
A sound echoes through the canal. Something between a horn and a howl, like the moaning of a great beast. In the distance the canal fades away into fog, and he thinks he can see something moving behind the mists, something immense and terrible. But he feels no fear.
He is surprised to find that he is no longer afraid of anything.
Chapter One of Act Two of my ongoing freewrite serial story. You can find a chapter list from Act One here.
Here is Chapter Two of ACT TWO
Written in five minutes from the writing prompt, "Canal" as part of the #freewrite exercise. Image is by me as well. You can view the prompt here and check out the other entries; each one is like a passageway from your reality to the next. Thanks to @mariannewest for creating and running this series of writerly locks and drains.