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Post by suvalley on Aug 5, 2013 17:26:01 GMT -6
So delighted the journey of the family continues, FOTH  Now, get with the program, I am sure I am not the only one jonesing for a fix! hahaha! |
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Post by FOTH on Aug 6, 2013 15:59:18 GMT -6
and here is an example of just why I love reading instead of say a movie where stuff flies by so quickly you don't have time to enjoy it. You used the phrase "falling free through the air", which I enjoyed, but I was able to take the time to re-arrange the phrase to "falling through the free air" and could spend time thinking about Einar's family living free again. Your story has many, many places where I do that. It's kinda like picking one of your words and wallering it around in my mouth like a piece of chocolate. (yeah, it felt better with the er rather than the ow). You end with the word "slumber". Just saying that word slowly almost puts one to sleep. slumber, slumber, slum,,,
[/size] I enjoy the way words are put together. Glad this can bring you some enjoyment, too. So delighted the journey of the family continues, FOTH
Now, get with the program, I am sure I am not the only one jonesing for a fix! hahaha! 
Thanks for reading.
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Muninn searched. He knew they were no longer in the mine, but neither, when he made several passes and sat for a time outside the big sliding glass doors in the living room at Bud and Susan’s, could he detect any sign of them at the house. The snow machines had frightened him when they came to the mines, and even when some instinct which told him to keep close to Einar had in some measure overcome the fright, he had lost them in the end. No way to keep up with the truck that had taken them away, and now the raven was at a loss. Splitting his time between house and mine he kept a lonely vigil, searching, in the evenings, the timbered land between, and sometimes flying all the way down to the spot where he had last seen Einar, down at the highway. The raven never did find anything which might lead him to his human charges, but it was through one of these daily vigils that he came to witness a most curious sight.
* * *
Einar woke before daylight the following morning and lay holding himself rigid against the cold as he watched the sky pale and begin going grey. East. Over there behind them was east, it appeared, for when he arched his neck and stared back through the gently swaying boughs of their shelter-tree, the silent, slow-creeping light seemed stronger. East. Well, it was something, knowing that. Even if he had no reference against which to measure the knowledge, no way to gain perspective on their new location. Needed to climb one of those ridges that he could begin to see in the strengthening light, soaring rocky and rugged above the area of meadow and timber where they were camped. That, or find the maps Kiesl had assured him were included in the drop bag that lay out there somewhere on the snow. Yes, that seemed a good plan. Find the maps, then climb a ridge and get oriented. He did not, under current circumstances, absolutely have to know their exact location, he supposed, but needed at least some solid idea of how near they might be to the things which might threaten to compromise their existence in this new place. He did not want to stumble unaware across some major hiking or skiing trail, for instance, and leave tracks that might make someone wonder. Not that he expected Kiesl to have dropped them to close to any such thing, but he had to know for himself; with daylight coming and danger of potential discovery increasing, the matter suddenly seemed urgent.
When Einar—wanting to scout their new home and possibly even find the bag before Liz woke; she would, after all, be wanting breakfast, and he had yet to see anything he might try snaring—tried to move it was to find himself dreadfully stiff, hurt of his injured leg returning in a wave which seemed to clench itself around his stomach and leave him fighting back the bile that rose in his throat. Well. Not such a good start, but things would get better. Would have to. Much of the stiffness would be a result of his tumble upon hitting the ground, and that, he could surely work out as he started doing a bit more moving. The leg was as yet an unknown quantity, aggravating, for sure, but hopefully not in the end too debilitating. Wouldn’t know for sure until he’d really tried to put some weight on it, and this he did not intend to do until he was well away from the camp.
Wriggling out of the bed and creeping out into the snow, Einar was glad of the ski suit with which Bud had provided him, a good deal more warmth and protection than he was used to having through the long, cold months of that past winter, and pretty handy when a fellow is having to drag himself through the snow, too. Out from under the tree and some distance from where Liz and Will lay cozy beneath their folds of parachute material he made a try at standing, succeeded, but only so with the help of a small dead aspen that stuck up out of the snow near him.
Not so good, Einar. Gonna take you a mighty long time to search the couple of square miles where that bag could have landed, if you’re having to crawl. And you’ll leave a real noticeable trail, too. Come on now, it’s just a little twist. Ought to be able to support your weight. Not that much weight to support in the first place, so that should help… Didn’t help, though, and after a few painful and disappointing tries, Einar resigned himself to the necessity of using some sort of prop, at least for the moment. The tiny aspen tree which had supported him in standing seemed a handy option, and rocking it back and forth he managed to free its tenuous grip on the ground. Turning the aspen pole upside-down so that the broken remnant of its single root might serve as a handle for beneath his arm should he need such, Einar set off, hobbling along the edge of the timber in search of the drop bag.
Dotted with the low-growing scrub oak he recognized as belonging to altitudes slightly richer in oxygen than that at which he and Liz had been dwelling for some time, the land met Einar with an array of opportunities for finding food and shelter, rabbit sign apparent beneath the oaks, the tracks of a small squirrel disappearing beneath a spruce where the animal had apparently been digging up cones from a hidden stash and once, catching his attention as it moved in the wind, a single turkey feather caught in a bit of rough orange lichen on the side of a rock. All hopeful signs, and seeing them, he found himself anxious to learn more of this new land, not only where, precisely, it might lie on the map, but what benefits and challenges it would offer them as they sought to make a new life.
The first of which challenges, it soon became clear to Einar, was to involve simple movement, itself, at least for him. Leg wasn’t getting any better, not losing any of its stiffness with use, as he had hoped, and before long he found himself reduced once more to crawling. Which meant he must keep carefully to the trees, not wanting to leave great, lumbering trails thorough the open snow, and between these two factors, the pace of his morning reconnaissance was dramatically slowed. No success, no sign of either the bag or his main chute, and he was not surprised, seeing as he was looking at the world from approximately the height and perspective of a lynx or bobcat. Surely you can do better than this. And he did, pushing aside the hurt as he rose, moved, settling into a hopping, shuffling gait which covered the distance far better than the crawl had done, and before the passage of an hour he had located the bag, studying it for some time from a distance before satisfying himself that no one had been near since its landing.
Thing was heavy, well-laden with whatever Kilgore and Kiesl had seen fit to pack, and Einar looped the lines around his waist, pulling, tugging and generally struggling to move the uncooperative bag through the crusty and rotting snow, but quite pleased at his success in having found it. Liz would have breakfast that morning, and he, hopefully, would soon know more about their location, and could begin making plans for their immediate future. |
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se209
New Member
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Post by se209 on Aug 6, 2013 20:59:05 GMT -6
Now what has this bird spotted
se209
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Post by icefire on Aug 6, 2013 22:47:31 GMT -6
Poor Munnin! He is suddenly without his human family! I'm thinking, though, that he could sure play some havoc with the feds, ESPECIALLY if any of Einar's old gear is anywhere near to be found...talk about the possibilities of leaving false "trails" all over the place, all while Einar and family are far, far away...
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Post by FOTH on Aug 8, 2013 15:07:43 GMT -6
Now what has this bird spotted
se209 He is a very observant creature... Poor Munnin! He is suddenly without his human family! I'm thinking, though, that he could sure play some havoc with the feds, ESPECIALLY if any of Einar's old gear is anywhere near to be found...talk about the possibilities of leaving false "trails" all over the place, all while Einar and family are far, far away... Yes, he could potentially cause a great deal of confusion! Hopefully none of which would lead the feds to look more closely at Bud and Susan... |
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Post by FOTH on Aug 8, 2013 15:08:11 GMT -6
Liz met him before he was halfway back to their sleeping spot with the bag, sliding Will over onto her back and insisting that she be allowed to help pull the load. Together they dragged it through the snow and at times over its surface, for daytime temperatures wherever they were apparently climbed high enough to begin melting its surface, which then froze to a hard crust during the colder nights. Typical spring snow, bane of skiers but for a man who is trying to cover ground without leaving tracks, a great advantage. All he must do is to sit out the warmer hours, keep still and do his traveling very early in the morning when the crust has had a chance to thoroughly solidify, and before the next day’s sun begins once again to rot it.
Einar was glad the bag mostly skated across the surface, and not simply because of his aversion to leaving sign. Whatever the two conspirators had loaded into the thing, it felt as though it weighed close to half a ton—a gross over-estimation, and Einar knew it—and would have been a major challenge to move through deep powder.
“Where are we headed?” Liz wanted to know. “Back to the big ponderosa?”
“Yeah, better go take inventory, see what we’ve got here and hopefully look at a map or two, and then we can start to make some sort of plan. Need to get up high and have a look at things, make sure there’s not a town or ski trail or something just over the ridge…”
“Roger wouldn’t do that to us!”
“Nope. Don’t believe he would. But I’ve got to see for myself. Let’s take a quick look in the bag, stash everything and make a go of it before the sun comes out and starts rotting this snow again. Not too anxious to be leaving tracks everywhere, until we know just where we are.”
“We’re lower, aren’t we?”
“Lower, maybe further south, too. I don’t know these mountains. Though of course the vegetation seems real similar to what we would have found at home—down around Bud and Susan’s elevation. We’ll just have to see.”
Speaking of elevation, Einar seemed to be losing it all of a sudden, sinking towards the ground as his injured leg tired of being compelled to support more weight than it was really able to do, and buckled beneath him. With a firm hold on the aspen staff he’d found for himself, he managed to stop the descent, remain standing, but the situation did slow their pace and leave Liz looking for ways she might make their path easier, though she said nothing about it.
Back at their makeshift camp Liz freed Will from her back and set him down to play on the mattress of firs while she helped Einar unstrap the bag and explore its contents. Einar was cautious, almost insisted on dragging the thing back out away from camp and doing the initial opening, himself, well out of range of his family should something go dreadfully wrong, but he tried his best to dismiss the thought, knowing Roger had packed the bag and that the pilot had no reason, really, to go to all that trouble and risk just to destroy them, in the end. Still, he found himself gritting his teeth and squinting as he unloosed the final webbing strap—as if it would have helped—edging over to place himself between Liz and the bag. Nothing disastrous, unless one could count the jar of Nutella that had been placed, apparently at the behest of Susan, atop all the other goods in the bag and which, being wrapped in a scarf, had survived the drop quite nicely. Einar grinned, setting it aside. Immediately below was a large camouflaged tarp, which he spread beside the past night’s bed as a base on which to sort and organize the bag’s remaining contents.
Liz was pleased to see a variety of concentrated and nutrition-dense foodstuffs, cheese, powdered milk, powdered eggs, peanut butter, a few pounds of rice and split peas to help them get started, spices, salt, elk jerky, dried apples and a variety of other wonderful surprises. Some of these were packed into a large pot which could be used both for cooking and—should the need arise—melting snow for drinking water. Also included was a change of warm clothes for all, an extra pair of boots each for Einar and Liz, snare wire, sixty feet of parachute cord (in addition to that attached to the various chutes by which they had come to be in this new place) Einar’s rifle and a supply of ammunition both for it and for his pistol.
The thing which most interested Einar, however, was the large waterproof map bag in which a number of documents were folded. Choosing a wide area Forest Service map he spread it out on a free corner of the tarp, studying while Liz delved into their newfound food supplies and began preparing a breakfast. Bud—Einar knew the style—had marked the drop zone clear as could be, but when he began orienting the map and trying to make sense of surrounding landmarks, things weren’t making a tremendous amount of sense. At first Einar chalked this up to their position so close to one of the ridges; often, things can look very different when one is too close to them to get a perspective. But that didn’t quite explain it. Nothing was in the right place, ridges running entirely in the wrong directions and several peaks which he thought certain he ought to be able to see, according to the map, missing entirely. Well. Perhaps it would all make more sense once they had climbed to the top of one of those ridges. Liz was watching him.
“So, where are we?”
“Two counties over, supposedly, in the bottom of a very remote valley situated at about nine-thousand feet elevation, nice looking spot, several little creeks coming down off the ridges and no human habitations or even marked trails for miles. But something doesn’t add up. I think Roger dropped us somewhere else. Need to get some height, take a better look.”
“Yes, let’s do that. After breakfast.”
In his eagerness to reach some high ground and get a better idea of their surroundings, Einar did his best to eat everything Liz put before him lest by his hesitance the trip be delayed. Struggling with his own hunger, which had been increasingly stalking him since he’d begun eating a bit more at Bud and Susan’s, he found himself somewhat alarmed at the haste with which they would go through their rations if they kept on eating the way Liz had them doing that morning. He knew though that she was surely hungry after the busy day prior to their jump, and then no supper, and the rations were only a temporary solution, in the first place. They would soon have to get snares set out, find, perhaps, that turkey whose feather he’d seen stuck to the rock and begin getting themselves established, but first he must know how far they ought to move, and in what direction, and to that end he helped Liz package up all of their newly-discovered treasures and hoist them high up to hang from a branch of the big ponderosa, safely to await their return.
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Post by FOTH on Aug 10, 2013 16:07:53 GMT -6
Taking the day off today, but will be back tomorrow with another chapter. Thank you all for reading! |
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Post by FOTH on Aug 11, 2013 18:24:52 GMT -6
Hate to do this, but once again plans did not go as planned...and I have not finished the chapter for today.
Hope you all can forgive the delay, and be patient until tomorrow!
Thanks again for reading...
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Post by icefire on Aug 11, 2013 18:54:05 GMT -6
That's what happens with plans....oftentimes, "stuff" happens that tosses the proverbial monkey wrench into the works. I'm sure the new chapter will be worth the wait.
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Post by FOTH on Aug 12, 2013 15:16:04 GMT -6
Thanks, Icefire. ___________________ Equipped with a few items out of Kilgore’s supply bag and quite anxious to learn more about their surroundings, Einar and Liz set off through the timber which lay between their camp and the nearest ridge, Einar finding the entire thing rather a slow prospect with his leg still unwilling to support even a reasonable portion of his weight. For the first few hundred yards he tried simply keeping most of the weight off the leg with the use of his aspen staff, but no sooner had they begun climbing a bit than this strategy ceased doing him any good. The terrain was simply too steep for a one-legged man to make much headway without actually resorting to crawling, and as he was not yet willing to do this—slows a fellow down too much, and folks tend to look at you funny—he simply gritted his teeth and tried his best to use the leg. Some four hundred feet higher in elevation Liz, who was in the lead, stopped for a break, making her way out to the edge of a rocky outcropping which allowed them something of a view over the timber and back down to the area of their camp. “Well, what do you think? I don’t see any sign of civilization, at least, and that has to be a good thing…” Einar wormed his way through the brush—a tangle of serviceberry and scrub oak—until he was beside her, stood panting for a minute until he’d got his breath. “Yeah, real good thing. At least we do seem to be alone out here, wherever he’s dropped us. Well. Onward?” “How’s your leg?” “Hurts.” An understatement, she could see, the way he stood white-knuckled and grim-faced as he hung onto that aspen stick, willing himself to remain upright but appearing close to toppling over. “Should we call this good for today, and come back another time?” “It’s not good. Not high enough to get any perspective yet, see where we might be on this map. If we’re on this map at all.” “It did seem we flew an awfully long way…” “Oh, that was part of Kiesl’s plan, no doubt. Fly far out of the way just to confuse anyone who might have been trying to keep an eye on him. For all I know, he may have flown straight south for two of those hours, then turned around and brought us back past the airstrip and right into our own country again—where the map shows him intending to drop us. It’s just that I don’t recognize this place, and really need to get a better idea of where we are. Got to keep climbing.” “Alright, we can keep climbing. How high do you think we’ll need to get, before we have a better view?” Shading his eyes, Einar peered up the slope. Saw nothing but trees. “Don’t know. Probably all the way to the top, which was about twelve, fifteen hundred feet off the valley floor, if I’m remembering the map correctly. Would really like to be able to see down over the other side, if we can. Better get moving.” The terrain grew steeper as they climbed, Einar taking the lead for a while and pausing now and then to turn and peer down the slope behind them, but for the most part, the trees and brush were too thick to allow for much of a view. He hoped there might be an area at the top where things would be more open, some combination of rockier ground and persistent wind having prevented the crest from becoming too heavily timbered. He had in the past observed this often to be the case with saddles such as the one to which they were headed, lower areas along the ridge crest between two distinct rises, which provided natural channel for the wind. As they climbed, the vegetation changed from evergreens interspersed with thickets of serviceberry and chokecherry brush to a vast slope of aspens, large trees, far taller than any they might have expected to find around their high basin, and it soon became clear to Einar that in the not-too-distant past, a great wind had indeed blasted its way up and over the saddle of the ridge, leaving in its wake hundreds of fallen trees which now lay barely covered in the diminishing snow, most of them right at knee or calf height where they provided perfect traps for any unwary humans who might find themselves stumbling along the surface and periodically breaking through the rotten snow. Einar’s leg just couldn’t take it. If travel had been difficult before, it was rendered all but impossible for him after a few stumbles and twists amongst those concealed tree trunks, and before long he was doing well just to hop along on one leg, struggling to lift the injured one out of holes in the snow and drag it along behind him. Besides which, he was really beginning to feel the chill in his bones, despite the ski suit with which Kilgore had provided him, too worn out to do a lot of shivering, but knowing he’d be in serious trouble if forced to stop moving for any significant length of time without some source of heat. Still in the lead he stopped, motioning for Liz to pass him and take a turn, but instead she stopped beside him, helped free his trapped leg and wrapped her scarf around his neck. “Pretty rough going, isn’t it?” Quiet for a minute, breath rasping in his throat, he took a bit of snow and let it melt in his mouth in an attempt to ease its dryness. Not too much. Was cold enough, already. “Yeah. Lot of trees down. Looks like we’re…more than halfway to the top, though.” “Let’s take a break.” He nodded, didn’t want to do it—leg would only stiffen up further, he was pretty sure, if he stopped moving, and besides, the cold would get him—but supposed she must be tired from lugging Will up the mountain. Couldn’t do too much harm to let her catch her breath, so long as they were soon moving again. But Liz had other ideas. “How about if you wait here with Will, and I hurry up to the top and see what can be seen? I can give you a full report, maybe even make a sketch on the margins of one of the maps, if you’ll send them with me. Think I could get up there pretty quickly…” “Doggone leg. Sorry it’s slowing us down so much.” “I didn’t want to say anything, but it’s getting worse, isn’t it?” He shrugged. “Is what it is, but looks like it will be taking me a while to get to the top. If you’re willing…” “Of course! I’ll be as quick as I can, so we can get back to camp.” “One thing though. Better take Will with you. Not gonna go so well if you’re delayed a little and he gets hungry. I’d do my best, but there’s no substitute for Mom, in that case.” Liz saw the logic in his suggestion, but sensed something else behind it, as well, something she did not entirely understand and definitely did not like. In any case, it made sense for Will to go with her, and practically, his presence would not dramatically slow his progress. Making sure Einar had a good spot to wait—together they had scooped and brushed all the snow from one of the buried aspen trunks, piling it in a semi-circle and creating a dry seat surrounded by something of a windbreak—she took the maps and set off up the slope. |
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Post by kaijafon on Aug 12, 2013 18:28:34 GMT -6
well worth the wait. thank you. quick question, did Liz get her homemade parka back? was it in the bag?
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Post by FOTH on Aug 14, 2013 16:02:27 GMT -6
well worth the wait. thank you. quick question, did Liz get her homemade parka back? was it in the bag? She did not jump in the parka, but yes, it was in the bag. She still needs it for carrying Will--until either summer comes, or he gets too big to fit in there! ____________________ Einar listened as Liz’s footsteps crunched off into the distance above him, sound soon dimming as she climbed, trees coming between them until he was left all alone in the silence. In that silence, Liz no longer there to motivate him with her presence to restrain and conceal signs of such trouble, he gave himself over to the shivering which had been trying to seize him every time they stopped, head bowed and arms wrapped around his middle as he sought to let the shaking warm him. Wasn’t working too well, needed to be up and moving, he knew, if he was to have much chance of remaining mobile by the time Liz had finished her climb and returned to him. Standing there in the snow pit, swinging his arms and marching in place as well as his sore and swollen leg would allow, he lamented agreeing to stop and wait, in the first place. Even if slow, his progress up the slope would have served to generate some heat, and even now he could follow in her tracks, reach the top, perhaps, as she sat studying the maps. Not a good idea, and he knew it. Should Liz for some reason return to his waiting-spot by some route other than that used on her climb, they might well miss one another and end up wandering about as darkness fell, walking in circles as each pursued the trail of the other. Bad plan, lightly equipped as they had come and with the brush in places so thick as to be nearly impenetrable, considering the depth and rotten quality of the snow… Might spend the entire night just shoving their way through the brush in search of one another, and while Liz might make it alright, he knew that he, realistically, would not. So. Looks like you’re waiting right here, and you’re gonna have to make the best of it. Just keep yourself moving, and you should be fine. Give the leg a good twist if you start feeling sleepy, and there’s no chance of your losing awareness in the cold. That ought to be plenty to keep you awake. And then she’ll be back, hopefully with some good solid information, and we can all head down and sit around a good warm fire tonight, planning where we go from here and where we might want to start looking for a place to set up a more permanent shelter. Be good to have something like that in place before the next storm comes, because this time of the spring, we’re almost certain to have another good storm or two.
Thus occupied in thought and contending physically with the cold and with the hurt of his leg, Einar passed what he estimated must have been upwards of an hour in a wearying but effective routine of structured motion interspersed with brief if exhausted rests, mind busy all the time with the puzzle of their new location and of what it could mean that Kiesl had apparently dropped them in a place some fair distance from the one which had originally been intended. The pilot had not said much about their destination when, half an hour into the ride, he’d slid open the window between truck cab and camper shell, and struck up a conversation with his passengers. The talk had mostly been about the technical aspects of the jump, at first, Kiesl apparently wanting to make sure that Einar remembered and Liz was somewhat educated about the particulars of the thing she would be doing for the first time several hours hence, but when he had somewhat assured himself as to the readiness of the pair, conversation had turned to memories of past jumps, missions, corners of the world whose acquaintance the two of them had made, if not always at the same time. Einar had enjoyed the conversation—as much as anyone can enjoy good conversation while confined in the back of a truck with one’s family, half expecting every moment to hear the squeal of tires as the feds cut off all avenues of escape—had done a good deal more listening than speaking, but would have liked time to further reminisce with the pilot. Well. Not likely to happen now, hopefully not, anyway, as their best option appeared to involve removing themselves far enough from the drop zone that not even Kiesl or Kilgore would be able to locate them, in the future. If either man should have a mind to do such a thing. But first they must know just where they were, and in which direction good sense dictated they ought to travel, lest they end up placing themselves in more danger by unwittingly straying too close to civilization. He wondered what was taking Liz so long. Supposed they might have been a good bit further below the ridge crest than he had estimated when they parted ways, prayed nothing had gone wrong and contemplated once again following her tracks and attempting to catch up to her, but once again decided against it. Would give her a bit more time, first. Time, he knew, can be a tricky thing when waiting for someone, can seem to pass a good deal more quickly than it actually is, and she might well be right above him, about to come into view. Straining ears and clamping jaws he sought to catch any faint and distant hint of crunching in the snow, moving branches, anything that might indicate her approach, but there was nothing. Some two hours later, sun beginning to sink low and Einar rather past his capacity for maintaining anything like a workable body temperature without some serious movement, he made his decision, rose with considerable difficulty and started up the slope. She had taken big steps, anxious, it appeared, to reach the top and start back down, and as this pattern continued without any sign of letup, it only added to the mystery of her delay. And to the difficulty of his own travel, for though a good nine inches taller than she and anxious to use her footsteps lest he have to discover for himself all the pitfalls she had already made plain, Einar found himself hard-pressed to keep his stride as long as hers had been. Mostly he ended up stumbling about somewhere halfway between the halting, liming steps to which his leg was trying so hard to limit him, and the ones she had taken, floundering and flopping and generally making frustratingly slow progress. Doggone it Einar, you’ve got to move faster, here. She could have reached the top, turned around and been back to your waiting-spot two times over, by now. Come on, you’ve got it in you. Just…right, yeah, just drag the leg. Thing’s all but useless by now anyway, as far as supporting your weight, and it just wrenches it worse every time you end up sticking it down through the snow. Yeah, this is the way!
New method of travel a good bit more effective if not nearly as graceful as the careful walking he had so far been attempting, things began to go a bit more quickly for him, trees passing by and the summit nearing. When after nearly an hour’s climbing—slow going through all that down, snow-hidden timber, and the effort did not seem to be improving his leg any, despite his new method of travel—Einar finally came out on the ridge crest, the reason for Liz’s lateness became immediately plain. |
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