Training, bathing, and a blizzard

I can’t describe how grateful I was to Illyára! In a world where I felt lost most of the time and had to cling to three native girls for advice, protection and guidance, she showed me a path towards a specific, reachable target: to grow stronger and adapt better through my own efforts!

The first step was easy: eating native food to accumulate the necessary amount of manærite in my body. Reeza later told me that this mysterious mineral accumulates mainly in the bones and around the nerves. So I even went so far as to smash the bones of the already hunted dead animals and mix the resulting powder into my meals. Quite a journey: from vegetarian to meat eater to bone eater!

Step two was not so easy: Training! I was never the particularly athletic type. Frankly said: I hated sports! Nothing eluded me this much, except maybe fashion. No, fashion definitively was my least favorite topic of all! But sports came immediately after that!

My only ever workout consisted of my own work: crafting, tinkering, building, repairing and moving stuff. That had to change! I asked Lily if she could give me some workout advice which she did with fierceful glee.

I regretted my decision immediately! What I got was not some helpful advice, but a brutal workout regime she painstakingly observed like a merciless slave driver! I had to do sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, squats until I nearly fainted. Then she sat together with me in my Munchie and let Reeza or Yára suspend us onto the ice to let me chase the ‘Ice Wallow’! With just a bare minimum of electric assistance!

You have to imagine: The iceboat flew over the plains with easily fifty or sixty (liyúrean!) miles per hour/candle/whatever! And I had to chase that alone (!) with a five hundred pound vehicle! Can you imagine my exhaustion?

What was even more difficult: I was sweating a lot and had no means to wash myself or my clothes! Can you imagine my disgust? The girls certainly didn’t seem to mind. Well, after two years in the wild I suppose you don’t care anymore about such preposterous civilized things like personal hygiene…

On the contrary: sometimes I caught them sniffing and inhaling my odor like something sweet and overly precious, which I found, well, off-putting to be honest. My own sense of smell didn’t detect the faintest scent coming from them which I found quite unfair. But who could I complain to? Nobody but myself!

After two days we reached the next hidden supply storage, and that’s where I finally demanded to get a proper bath, after I’d helped the girls move the bags and bundles on to the ‘Ice Wallow’ of course.

“Well, if you insist!” smiled Lily with a predatory grin and nodded to Illyára. The ælven girl nodded back with a similar smirk and went to work. Guess what she created for me? An ice bath! You read that right: A GODDAMN FREAKING ICEBATH!!

It was nothing more than a shallow trough behind a bend of the ice cave, filled with fresh meltwater just above the freezing point. Oh, the triumphant expressions on their faces! And of course Lily immediately stifled every protest coming from me with the words: “It’s either that or no bath at all! If you really wanna bath, there is your chance!”

“And my clothes?” I dared to ask.

“What’s with them?”

“Where should I wash them?”

She rolled her eyes.

“There is water! I’m sure you wouldn’t need all of it for yourself?!”

“Helloo! It’s cold and where is the soap?”

“Soap? What’s that?”

You’ve got to be kiddin’ me!

In the end I had to slip into the icebath and afterwards dress again in my sweat soaked clothes. A truly numbing experience, I’m telling you!

Fortunately Reeza took pity on me and crafted a proper bathtub from leftover wood she was storing as a reserve. AFTER I took my teeth chattering into the ice water of course! My appreciation was as heartfelt as conflicted!

At least now I could properly clean myself and my clothes. Thankfully I remembered that I had taken two pieces of soap with me as an iron reserve (I usually NEVER use soap!) and of course Lily immediately used that as an opportunity for further training (do you know how physically exhausting cloth washing without a washing machine is?)!

Of course Reeza always helped me to melt some ice for bathing and washing and heating it properly, at the same time she gleefully joined the others, poking fun at me for being sophisticated.

Sophisticated! You hear that?! Never had anybody called me that!

I guess, two years out in the wild really does something to you and your understanding of ‘bare necessities’!

But the fun thing is: They noticed how soothed and relaxed I felt and shortly afterwards started taking baths too. Only Yára and Reeza though. Lily stubbornly refused.

Sadly these nice times didn’t last all too long.

The next storage, we reached and emptied without any problems. Lily wanted me to repeat my icebath, insisting it would do me good, but this time I refused adamantly

“Why should I do that when you wouldn’t even use a normal warm bath?” I asked exasperated. She looked as if she’d be willing to also join the club of ‘warm bathers’ if I’d be willing to expose myself to the ice water, but I refused coldly and we left the location on bad terms.

Up ‘till now the sky had been always cloudless and the sun was our faithful companion, circling around us, sinking every day deeper and deeper in the north as we progressed further and further south, but now for the first time clouds were visible in the southeast, dark and unusually complex.

The highest clouds though, coming first, were very thin and bright and we got serious trouble seeing our surroundings. I’ve read about the infamous ‘whiteout’ in arctic environments, but of course never experienced it first hand. I’m telling you, it is absolutely frightening when the whole world around you turns a uniform white, as if you’ve been struck with sudden blindness! The explanation is easy: the sunlight is reflected both from the snow cover on the ground and the white clouds high in the sky. The result: a white-grey blindness!

Amazingly Al’Reeza was still able to see something, but she had to slow down considerably. I was anxious to reach the hideout in time, but Lily gruffly reassured me that we could hunker down everywhere, as we had enough supplies and two magicians with us.

Foolish me!

Thankfully the conditions became better when darker, lower hanging clouds started to block out the sun, and when Yára took the steer, the whiteout was completely gone. But now the wind started to pick up considerably and the ælven girl had trouble guiding it at the proper angle into the sail and blocking too heavy gusts from unfavorable directions.

It was an eerie sight, when on the southern horizon the lowest cloud covers became visible, white again and reaching completely to the ground. I knew why, because around us gusts stirred up the snow cover and pushed drifts like fast moving fog banks over the vast plain. Reeza had abandoned her sleep and helped Yára to divert the ones targeting us. She also had to help to protect us from the increasingly furious winds.

It was a race against the clock, because navigation started to become more and more difficult by the minute. I already prepared myself to spend the storm outside the hideout, when Illyára finally cried out, she’d sensed the supplies. It was really urgent now, because the low lying, rapidly approaching wall cloud had almost reached us.

The girls decided to bunker down a little further away from the hidden storage than usual to avoid as much of the blizzard conditions as possible. The ‘Ice Wallow’ sank down into the ice and the hellish wall cloud, consisting of small, but razor sharp snow crystals and icicles roared overhead and blocked out everything except for a white, swirling madness, accompanied by a crazy, polyphonious wail like I’ve never heard before, even in the most violent storms I’ve witnessed so far.

Thankfully, the ice walls around us quickly closed overhead and shut out these voices from madness, which became quieter and quieter the deeper we sank. When we didn’t hear anything except our own heavy breathing anymore, our descent stopped and Yára started making a tunnel sideways towards the storage. Not long, and we had access to a fresh batch of supplies. We had to carry it a greater distance than normally (around two to three hundred feet at most), but nobody was rushing us.

The storm didn’t let up for three whole days!