Before they set off for Sky Blu, Kelpie wraps Mateo in as many thermal layers as she can find, concluding with a thick sleeping bag. She helps to carry him out to their chosen Sno-Cat, inside which Linda has already been bound with zipties. She sits herself between the two of them, a medical kit wedged between her legs. She has taken every precaution she can to ensure that one, certain fact really is certain: Mateo will live. He has to.

He promised her.

She wishes again that she didn’t have to expose him to Linda’s presence, but she’s ended up in Eddie’s Sno-Cat, and Kelpie won’t abandon him, either.

Mateo’s skin is pale and cold, even with all the layers. He’s lost a lot of blood over the last few days. He barely talks, and when he does, it is a laborious endeavour. Kelpie spends most of the journey talking to him about her plans for when she makes it back home, and asking him about his family. Anything to keep up his will to live.

The journey becomes almost dull after a point, the Sno-Cats crawling steadily over the treacherous terrain. Kelpie is loath to let Mateo sleep, but it would do him more harm than good to try to stay awake. She watches him closely, making sure he’s still breathing, that his heart is still beating steadily. She’s not going to let him die, not without a fight. Not without her.

Suddenly, a spike of crystal lunges from the flurrying snow. The Sno-Cat scrapes its side against it as Eddy swerves, and Linda’s window shatters. Kelpie clutches onto Mateo instinctively, holding him steady as he gasps awake, trying to cushion the collision as best she can. She doesn’t notice Linda cutting her bonds with a shard of crystal. She doesn’t notice Linda turning in her seat to drive the shard into her neck.

Kelpie falls sideways, coating Mateo in her blood. It warms the pale, clammy skin of his face and runs in rivulets down the creases of his sleeping bag, crimson on bright red. Her body ends up slumped over his lap, and he watches as life drains from her eyes in her final moments. She gargles something, an apology or a plea or a reassurance, choked by the blood in her throat. Then she’s gone.

Mateo doesn’t notice Eddie shooting Linda. He doesn’t notice Eddie climbing into the back of the Sno-Cat and clutching his hands against Kelpie’s neck. He breathes shallow, wretched breaths, and whispers, “All… is… son… I promised…”

Kelpie’s body is hauled off of his chest, and the blood wiped from his skin before it dries, but he grips her hand as tight as his weakening muscles will allow, and watches her corpse closely. Her face, twisted in pain, fills his vision for the rest of the journey to Sky Blu; her glassy eyes staring lifelessly back into his. He studies every contour, searching for meaning, as the freezing winds admitted by the shattered window sap the last of his strength.

A few hours after reaching Sky Blu, Mateo passes peacefully, clutching the hand of Kelpie's corpse.

Allison’s body is laid gently in the plane with Mateo’s alongside her, still clutching her hand. Eddie reaches down to shut her eyelids, and then, after a moment’s pause, he turns and sets to work finalising the repairs.

A sharp pain runs through Allison’s gut.

She hears the ring of crystal driven through flesh. The tearing of skin and soft give of tissue. The resistance of sinew and the crunching of bone.

Noises she had never considered before she’d driven a blade through Arthur.

Noises that still haunted her dreams.

She was asleep.

Far off voices threaten to wake her, murky, and garbled - like radiostatic.

Muffled sounds of a ship that sunk long ago.

An odd thought.

Allison had never even been near the ocean. She couldn’t swim – why tempt fate?

She was nearing consciousness. Bright light streaming into her room, brushing her closed eyelids, making her obscured vision glow like the rising sun.

She had slept in again.

She had left the farm work to Clark, again.

The voices were him – complaining to himself downstairs, no doubt. He would be pissed at her, and she would revel in every second of it. What had kept her in bed this morning was worth incurring Eddie Clark’s wrath.

The room is white – bathed in the morning sun it almost seemed to glow. Like a cavern of crystals, or sheets of snow glittering at dawn.

Personally, she preferred warmer weather.

White gauze curtains floated in the open window, dancing in the warm breeze.

“Not gauze, Chiffon!” her wife had said, “Gauze is a medical term!”

Her nose had wrinkled at how clinical Allison was being, in the way it always did when she was irritated.

She would never admit how cute she found that.

Allison looked over to her right, where her wife lay sprawled across the duvet next to her. Taking up far too much room – in a position that couldn’t possibly be comfortable.

Allison couldn’t help herself.

She rolled over, stretching her arms out around the other woman, burying her face into that mess of mousey brown curls.

“Good morning,” She murmurs, pressing a kiss to her head.

Evelyn lets out a soft sigh – still asleep.

Angry footsteps approach the room, irritated ramblings growing louder with each passing second. Blinking away sleep, Allison turns to the door.

She’s leant against the counter when Eddie enters, her arms wrapped around Evelyn’s waist. Letters and postcards scatter the worktop – photos of Mateo and his family, updates of their holidays.

Eddie balks.

“Seriously, get a room.”

She pulls Evelyn closer to her.

Clark grimaces.

He ditches a handful of dirty plates in the sink, before scarpering out the room.

“Fine, you can wash all that up then! I don’t want to intrude!”

Allison scowled.

“Oh what – we have to clean up after you because we’re women? Clark you sexist pri-“

“No!! Because you’re gross!”

Evelyn’s laughter cuts off any thought Allison has of responding.

She’s curled up on the sofa.

Nassim sits across from her, rather stiffly in the armchair, a stark contrast to herself and Clark.

They must be visiting.

A rather fat golden retriever is sprawled on Clark’s lap. A mess of fur with a lopsided tongue, and black glassy eyes. It stared at her.

She stared back.

The beast preferred Clark. Odd, given that Allison had always been good with animals. Hell, she had made a career out of that fact. Still, since they’d first picked it up (something she had been against), the creature might as well have been glued to Eddie.

Good riddance – the dog stunk – and this way Clark had to get up to let it out in the middle of the night.

“Are… are dogs supposed..?” Nassim doesn’t get the chance to finish the thought.

“To be that fat? No.” She throws a pointed look at Clark, who ignores her – continuing to scratch the chunky beast behind its ears, “Eddie just can’t say no to it. Even as the added weight threatens to crush him.”

Eddie throws a nearby magazine at her head.

Nassim just watches, their discerning stare almost as off putting as the beast’s blank one.

Still, it was nice to have them here.

“The mean lady doesn’t mean it, Grendel.” Eddie speaks in a stupid voice, ruffling the dog’s ears as he does, “You’re a good boy.”

Allison and Nassim watch with disgust.

Grendel was a terrible name for a dog. Allison had told him as much when he’d suggested it – but Eddie had insisted. He said it was a good name for a loyal dog.

From the look on Nassim’s face, they also hated it.

She’s on the porch, air cooling with the setting sun. She found comfort in the sunset, its time was reliable, a daily event. She wasn’t sure why, but she enjoyed its consistency.

Eddie stands shoulder to shoulder with her, looking out over the ranch.

For a second she pictured fibreglass windows and planes of ice.

He smiles as he watches the sunset, and she wondered if perhaps he found the same comfort in it that she did.

“Do you ever wonder how we ended up on that landing strip?”

She’s surprised when he breaks the silence. They made a habit of watching the sunset, and usually they were too tired to speak.

“Not really,” She sighs, “Why? Do you?”

She couldn’t hide her tone – how ridiculous she thought it was to dwell on that. Not with all they had now.

“Well.. yeah.. I-“ Clark frowns, fidgeting as he always did, “I just find it odd. It’s not something that normally happens to people.”

Allison doesn’t respond, just keeps watching as the smudge of orange slips beyond the horizon.

A sinking ship in Antarctic waters.

It was almost time to sleep now.

“I mean over six months of our lives just.. gone..”

She knew it was strange. To find yourself stood with about thirty others on a landing strip, with no memory of how you got there. To find various notes squirreled away in your belongings, explaining some connection to people you have no memory of. People you didn’t know – couldn’t so much as name – and yet felt closer to than anyone else.

“Well Brit,” She could feel Eddie role his eyes at the nickname, “We may never remember those six months..”

She rests her head on his shoulder.

For a moment, she sees a meeting room, and Eddie fighting back tears. Her head is resting on him in the same way, her arms around him as she whispers that it isn’t real.

A dead man’s voice calls out to him over the radio.

As quickly as it arrives it passes.

Memories ebbing and flowing, remnants of a sunken ship washed away by the tide of time.

“But if a bout of amnesia is the price we have to pay for all this,” Her voice is soft as she speaks, her eyelids becoming heavy, “Then I’d say it’s worth it, wouldn’t you?”

As the last embers of the day float below the horizon, Allison’s eyes close. She feels Clark’s hand squeezing hers as she sets with the sun.

She knows that he’s okay. That they’ll all be okay.

She lets herself sink into pleasant water. No ice or shipwrecks stain this Sea.

So Allison lets herself drown.

Written by Freya C.