" Sometimes life is altered
Break from the ropes, your hands are tied. "
- And All Things Will End

࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ
Mentions: Nikolai (D.), Rusalka & Others (Ind.)
Vireya

The wind howls louder now, pressing snow sideways across the ridge like
sharp-edged blades. Visibility is all but gone. Vireya lowers her head
slightly, eyes narrowed, scanning the storm for movement. Ghosts. 
Illusions. Maybe teammates. Hopefully teammates.

She doesn’t know yet.

Then, movement.

Nikolai. She knows him by the set of his shoulders, even half-shrouded
in snow. She watches him blink. Again. Again. Yet he remains unmoved.
She doesn’t call his name. Doesn’t bark or shout a command. That’s not her
way. The cliff doesn’t care about names, and Vireya won’t waste breath to 
potentially startle a dog who might not even be listening. She recognizes
the state he’s in. She’d been in it too; only moments before. He hadn’t
landed far from the edge.

But then, she catches him moving back.

Slower than he should. Steadier than she expected. Inch by inch, he backs
away from the abyss.

Good. He’s not dead. Not yet.

Vireya shifts her weight and angles her body toward him, then begins her 
march into the wind. It whips her blackened fur around her eyes, nearly
blinding her, but she lowers her head and pushes forward, breaking the
distance between them step by step. The dogs should regroup. It’s the
smartest move now; gather, count, survive. Aside from Nikolai, the
blizzard makes it hard to see anyone at all.

But there’s another on her mind.

Rusalka.

The thought claws at her throat, demanding attention. She swallows it back.
Later. Right now, a teammate is in front of her. Alive. That’s all that
matters.

When she reaches him, she says nothing at first. She doesn’t have to.
Her eyes, heavy with exhaustion and tension, say what her maw won’t;
You made it.

She doesn’t let it soften her. The moment lingers, then breaks.

Her gaze returns to the white void before them.

“Start counting,” she says at last, voice hoarse from cold.
“How many dogs can you see?”

The wind shrieks again, louder this time. High pitched and cutting, as if
it were screaming. Vireya's ears flatten against her skull for a moment, but
she doesn't stop scanning. She blinks snow from her lashes, one golden 
eye narrowing as she stares into the whiteout like it might blink back.
Shapes flicker at the edge of her vision. Branches? Maybe. Shadows. Or dogs.
She steps forward, paws crunching carefully through packed snow as she
edges past Nikolai, careful not to move too far and lose him in the white.
Her gaze briefly flicks toward him, registering any movement he might make.
When she confirmed he was alright to move, she lifted her muzzle higher
and squints through the blur. The storm has swallowed the horizon,
reduced the world to movement and wind and white. but there... faint.
A silhouette. A dog? A rock? She doesn't know. She takes another step. 

"We need to find the others," she said, the fur around her neck
bristling, "Ideally, the leader. But I want to know who we still have."

Nikolai - M - Team Dog - Mention(s): Vireya, (ind: whoever Vireya sees)

~

Nikolai was still too shocked to even form any sort of animosity towards Vireya. Instead, he nodded wordlessly. Honestly, at this point he was just glad to see at least one other dog alive, no matter who.

Doubtless it'd probably change later, but for now he guessed this was where they were.

"I... I don't know..." He hadn't been looking for he others until that point. He had been watching the sled tumble, with the little flip that it had done, upending everything... "... Other than you, I can't see anyone else," he finished resignedly. Well, he could count how many dogs he could see. Two. Himself and Vireya. To be fair, at least two was better than one, and Nikolai had another moment of short-lived levity.

Vireya taking a step forward made Nikolai made him start slightly, and he hurried to follow her. Even only a step or two away, he had already almost lost sight of Vireya in the howling wind and snow. And for once, he completely agreed with the stark assessment that Vireya had laid out.

"Agreed." At least, he tried to say that. It came out as "agg-" as the wind suddenly gusted slightly and he found himself swaying as his light build got the better of him and threatened to liteally blow him down. Instinctively shutting his eyes, he opened them seconds later to see Vireya already almost lost. Did the visibility have to be that bad?

Apparently so.

Barking, he hurried back towards Vireya's rapidly diminishing form. Really, one of the last things that he wanted to happen was to get separated from the dogs that he could see, because a team of two was better than a team of one any day.

"Do you see something?" Nikolai looked curiously at Vireya - getting a faceful of wind while doing so - before remembering to squint and trrying to make out whatever Vireya saw.

He couldn't. Honestly, that shouldn't have been a suprize.

Casting his attention wider, the blizzard defeated his senses yet again. He just couldn't see anything other than white, white, white, white. And a bit more white, in case anyone was wondering. It sure was a winter wonderland where everything was white. Literally freaking everything.

"Because if you can see something... I can't." Nikolai huffed with annoyance as he turned back to Vireya, wondering if there was something she saw that he most definitely couldn't in this whiteout.

" Sometimes life is altered
Break from the ropes, your hands are tied. "
- And All Things Will End

࿐ ࿔*:･ﾟ
Mentions: Nikolai (D.), Rusalka (D.), Remaining Team (Ind.)
Vireya

Vireya's eyes narrow further, the wind pulling at her lashes,
trying to shut them for her. Nikolai's voice reaches her through the
snow, but not just his words. The way they faltered. The pause.
The hesitation. No. He doesn't see it either.

Whatever she saw, if she saw anything, that was, it was gone now.
Swallowed by the storm. Just a shape. A trick of the wind.
"Then we keep moving," she barks over the howling wind, loud enough
to reach him, "staying still gets us dead."
She takes a step forward, beginning her trudge through the snow again,
but then she hears it. A bark. Familiar. Real. Vireya's ears flick
toward the sound, body snapping still in a way that's sudden and sharp,
like a blade being drawn. A moment later, warmth presses against her
side. Not the wind. Not snow.

Rusalka.

Vireya exhales. Long. Quiet. Her tail gives the smallest flick, so
brief it's easy to miss. She doesn't return the lick, however, nor does
Vireya speak right away. She presses back, shoulder to shoulder,
heat against heat in a subtle lean that says what her words wouldn't:
'You made it too.'

And when her sister's voice cuts through the wind like a command, and
before Vireya can stop her, she lifts her head and howls. But the
sound carries. Long, deep, piercing. It only takes but a moment of
hesitation for Vireya to tip her nose to the skies, joining Rusalka's
resounding call. Her voice was deep, urgent. Not the same motherly
call as Rusalka, but rather a beacon of urgency in the midst of the
storm. As soon as her breath left her, Vireya lowered her head back
down, looking to Nikolai this time. Her expression is unreadable
in the half-light, then back to her sister.

"If we head downhill, stay along the tree line, we might find a
break. A slop or a cave. Anything," Vireya's voice flattens into a
familiar steadiness as she focused her next words toward Nikolai,
"You heard her. Stay close. If we lose sight of one another,
bark. Howl, if you have to."

Her jaw clenches. She turns, begins to trudge forward again, angled
downhill. The way the wind whips the trees.

"Let's go."

=SPRITZY=

Team dog | Mentions: Deuce (dir)

The sudden blizzard had caught everyone by uneasy suprise - Spritzy included - but the little white she-dog was able to enjoy herself for an exhilirated few moments before chaos interrupted all around her. Snow-white fur buffeting in the storm and her paws striking the ground with an enthusiastic inelegance, she felt so mindless with the wind almost carrying her forward pace by pace.

That was the thing with blizzards. She loved the way she felt she could run with them. Other dogs would fear it, shrink from it's mighty power and force themselves away from it, straining from the guidance of the winds. But not her, she'd lean into it - let the howling air push her a little faster, a little further... Naturally, they were a threat. She would never be so stupid as to deny that. They could, as they had every well learnt, cause the end of even the smartest, most experienced sledders... Spritzy hadn't seen just who exactly had fell to a horrifically guaranteed demise, but their musher certainly had and that was all she could process before the pressure of scattering dogs and the snapping of the harness had her flung into the white-out.

She had scrambled in the snow, a panicked rolling and panting in the snowdrifts with her sight completely obscured by the aggressive constent snow fall. It was hard to process a thing with the roaring of the wind in her ears and the cold silent pressing of that horrible horrible idea that she could be stuck out her by herself.

No. No way.

She couldn't let herself think like that for even one second, that would doom her even before she'd even had a chance to try and check for everyone else. At most she'd seen what, one, two other dogs loose their footing and fall? That meant she was nowhere near alone. Anyone could be mere paces away from her, only obscured by this irritating curtain of thick blizzarding wind. She wouldn't wander off in search, lest she would do something stupid like get herself permanently lost or even worse, take a wrong turn and join some of her teammates at the bottom of cliff.

Spritzy did what she did best, pacing carefully back and forth in a straight line through the snow. With luck someone else would be close by and she wouldn't have to endure this bitter, biting cold all by herself for much longer-

"Spritz?"

Thank the mother of all storms. Maybe she was lucky?

Her tail wagging a mile a minute, a hazy blur that could rival the windspeed in sheer power, Spritzy charged after the voice, then after the comforting silhouette that finally contrasted enough from the heavy snow around him to reveal Deuce. Or rather, she did know it was him from his voice - muffled as it was - but it was much much better to also be seeing his face. She near enough barreled into him, stopping onto when her forehead plunged into his shoulder, panting in relief.