Snowflakes fell upon a sea of ice. They were sparse, and fresh, not having had more then a few hours to pave over the ice. In the distance many peaks of grand mountains watched in silent judgment. Alone, a man walked across the ice. He carried an old hammer, some rope and a backpack. He was clothed in a winter jacket: made of fine pelts, leather, all coming together in a bizarre patch work. The needlework was crassly done and matched his unkempt bush like beard.
He stopped walking once he had found a suitable spot. He set down his pack. Grabbed a large nail and drove it into the ice. The rope in a knot went around the anchor. He tied the rest to his midsection, a little above where his hips ended. Walking forwards he took another nail and began striking the ice. The ice had not yet grown heavy. After around 8 strikes with his hammer, with a slight *plop* the nail's tip would meet fresh water.
From a far another figure made it's way across. The man continued swinging the hammer. Iron striking steel, in the dead of winter there was no other noise except the crackling of the ice any time the man shifted his weight. His heavy gloves worked slowly until a dozen marks fell into the ice and a rough circle had been traced. In the dead of winter time passes slowly.
The figure had made it across the ice.
"It's finished." The man slammed his foot down and the chunk of ice dove beneath the water, splashing up a little bit of the frigid water. His expression softened.
The man turned to the figure. "It's all up to you now." The penguin looked up eyes with big bushy brows above, and nodded as best as a penguin might. He dove in to the water and raced away. The ice distorted light, and the penguin quickly faded from sight. He readied a bucket. The penguin re-emerged multiple times with fish in his mouth. Once even being able to snag two. He could not raise the large fish out from below the ice in it's small beak. So they settled on the small catch. By midafternoon the penguin exclaimed that light was getting more limited as the snow covered up ice, and it could not continue.
The penguin had ate his fill while down below. It hopped, fattened up onto the ice and shook some of the water off it's face.
"Now you, that was the deal" the penguin mentioned to the man speaking directly into his mind. "It's only fair after all." the man knew better then to argue and had already undressed. He dove into the icy water, immediately his heart began to beat rapidly and his breath hastened like he was running for his life. Inadvertently his legs danced beneath the ice.
"You have to dunk your head!" the penguin said. The man had sensed a certain glee in the thought the penguin sent. He dove down and immediately felt his eyes begin to freeze closed. He pulled on the rope and yanked himself up. Then slid out of the hole, he immediately began shivering and shaking. He squeezed his teeth together to prevent them from clacking together.
He dried himself with a blanket from the pack. The penguin watched silently.
"Satisfied!?" the man barked.
"I am, I'd be more if you had lasted more then 2 minutes. I had to do that for a whole two hours!" the man gave the penguin an evil eye. But soon enough got dressed and went back to the shore. The man occasionally shivered, the penguin happily slapped his feet along the ice breaking the sound of the deep crunches with which the man walked. It was about half an hour back to shoreside evergreen forest, during the quiet interlude the penguin filled the man's mind with images of fish and random debris that he had swam across. This place was in the deep wilderness the penguin seemed to say. Besides microplastics the penguin could not imagine that anyone had lived within 50 kilo-meters of this place.
The man wondered how the penguin came to such conclusions but doubted either of them could ever know . He took his hammer and snapped dead branches where he could find them, with a sharp table knife he peeled dry bark and fat wood of a nearby dead pine tree. With that he was able to form the foundations of a fire : the fatwood shavings became the tinder, dry bark the second layer, and then the branches the final part of the tent styled ire.
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
He had 30 matches, but before he got good enough to be reliable he had burnt through 15 of them. He sparked number 14 and ignited the fatwood and the fire came. He staked the fish through with a stick and hung them over the fire with two Y type branches on either side loosely set in the frozen soil. These two branches he kept with himself to save time. He was not been able to discern much about the ways to prepare a fish. He had devoured them in a short time all the same. First with the nice fatty section that was safest at the top of the fish. Then he ate eyes, and other pieces he could find tasteful and not overly boney.
The penguin watched him eat with a great curiosity. It was sport like the man had noticed. The penguins fins swung down, his head bobbed, and at times it'd click with it's mouth.
"Enjoying yourself are you?" the man asked.
"Actually for some reason I am. It's so different from how I eat, it feels like..." the penguin paused and paced back and forth, "I don't know, not like you know anything either." the penguin mocked. "Now give me the scraps!"
The man fed the penguin the warm scraps out of the bucket with a faint smile.
On the sixth carcass the penguin paused. "Can you hear that man?"
"No... What do you hear!" the man asked
"Look! There over the mountains!" the penguin pointed with his flipper. "It's flying right between the mountain peaks!"
"Airplane?" the man asked.
"I don't know, it doesn't have that spinny thing up top" the penguin replied.
"Quick, can you sense anyone nearby or in that aircraft?" the penguin shook his head with a firm no. He concentrated and formed the image of it into the man's head. It was a simple craft with two wings there was no cockpit to the man's perception. Instead the body was curved and at the very back was a propeller pushing it along. The wings where slightly swept to the back and at the bottom he saw a targeting pod, a protrusion along the bottom with a head that could spin around and take the video, able to sense the heat, or take pictures or videos.
"How do you know any of that?!" the penguin screeched, not separating the thoughts he drew and his more penguin like sounds.
"I don't know. I don't think anyone had to teach you to swim either! We have to run! it'll be here soon" he stomped on the fire crushing it underfoot. His pant lag began smoking and suddenly ignited. He grabbed some snow nearby and put the fire out. The penguin looked concerned at the sudden prangs of pain he could sense. The penguin knew what was coming next, it held it's flippers out and the man grabbed the penguin at his sides, only then could the penguin drop his flippers down. He began racing through the forest. Not long after they had ventured some ways deeper then they began to hear the sound of the propeller.
The man stared up he could see the drone flying above peaking through the thin forest. At times he saw it's shadow speed across the snow.
Suddenly he saw the drone dive down and a small winged package deployed into the air. He screeched to a halt. He had been running for a long while aimlessly and needed a strategy. The package's arrow like silhouette continued to descend growing bigger. He turned 90 degrees and raced to the side. Intuitively by the trajectories of the aero craft, he would force hard turns and force them to drop speed and use more energy. He raced in some ways up a light incline, until from behind he heard a loud. BZZzzzzzZZzzzz. Before he turned he heard a KACHUNK!
He dove for cover in the snow. The penguin lay silently below him. He didn't let his stomach crush the penguin instead he was bent over top. He heard something whistle over head. He barely turned his neck as a black tarp flew over and crashed into a tree standing right in front, the blanket spun around the trunk and squeezed, in 2 seconds. He rose to his feet not wanting to meet the same fate in case of another blanket. He knew luck rarely strikes twice.
Unwittingly a surprise branch suddenly smashed him in the forehead as he fled with another 90 degree turn. Immediately he found himself barely walking, unable to run or think, he felt blood trickle down his face. He came up to the end of the small hill. He turned the penguin to look him in the face and held him up. The penguin had an expression of extreme concern. The man fell backwards backpack first down it. With good fortune the snow was in good condition and they began to race down the hill. They accelerated far faster than either had anticipated.
The man hugged the penguin close. Suddenly an errant thought entered his head.
"Steer left!" it yelled.
His right foot began to break and he could hear a sign of relief. Suddenly they came to a place where the snow had thinned and they broke effortlessly a foot down into the snow. They had gathered a lot of speed and the remaining soil acted like a ramp. The man felt his body leap into the air and then smash down, the penguin rocketed out of his hands, and everything inside the pack went flying as they impacted the hard earth. He blacked out. The snow continued to fall.