CHAPTER 125: HOW TO SKI (BADLY)

Alteea sounded like someone had finally pried her fingers off six different alarms and handed her tea.

"Division Three, Four?" she said over open channel, level enough to use as a table. "No spikes. No hums. No tantrums. You are officially cleared for boredom. Please deploy yourselves for... not dying. Consider yourselves temporary free."

Kori cut in afterward like a second stamp on a permit. "Do not interpret that as permission to be creative."

Obi stuck his head out of his tent, hair committing three misdemeanors and a felony. "Define boredom."

"Anything that doesn’t produce a report with the word incident in the title" Alteea replied. "Go breathe. Before I remember more work. Now I have some files to sort... And some deaths to document..."

They were halfway through a breakfast that tasted like boiled perseverance when a young miner hovered at the edge of their tarp. He was the young one who’d given Lynea a handkerchief yesterday, cheeks still trying to decide if they were allowed to grow stubble.

"Uh" he said, grin already guilty. "You folks ever ski?"

Eight stares met his.

Feris, still floating an inch off the floor with a belt knotted to the center pole like she was tethered to reality, squinted. "Is that a weapon?"

Lynea didn’t look up from cleaning a thin line of dried blood off her forearm. "Sounds contagious."

"Hahaha! Nooo! It’s sliding!" the kid laughed. "On boards. Down snow. Fast." He pointed to the slope above the basin like he was offering them a cliff. "There’s a run by the old service path. It’s super fun."

Raizen studied the ridge. He thought about the mountain when it sounded weirdly. He thought about the way it had decided to be quiet, for now. He thought about the way Hikari’s shoulders had sat lower this morning than they had last night.

"We have... a day" he said, surprising himself with how the words felt. "Show us."

The kid lit up. "Yes! Okay, uh... name’s Toma" he added, as if he’d forgotten until now that he had one. "My dad’s working the west markers. He taught me on scrap when I was shorter than a shovel."

"Your father’s a Graver, right?" Obi asked, dredging up a memory from last night’s gossip.

Toma shrugged like the label didn’t quite fit and he didn’t want to wear it anyway. "When the money’s bad" he said. "Come on. Bring your dignity. Or don’t. It’s fun either way."

...

Miners and youngsters are good at making things happen with things that don’t want to be those things. An hour later, Toma and two of his friends had sawed old crate lids into blunt ovals, sanded the splinters, and drilled holes through each end. Straps from busted harnesses became bindings. Broom handles became poles. Someone produced a bundle of old wax and rubbed it across the undersides with the reverence of a ritual. The boards looked like trouble and history. Perfect.

Hikari held one up, tried to imagine the geometry of it. "So it’s controlled falling" she said.

Toma beamed. "Exactly. We don’t know it’s history, but I know that it’s a very old sport, and people used to even race!"

Esen arrived late, carrying a packet of something that claimed to be jerky, and eyed the makeshift skis like they’d wronged him in a past life. "We’re trusting our femurs" he said, pleased. He snapped his shock rings on and flexed his fingers. "And I brought artillery."

"No artillery" Ichiro said, already losing.

Toma led them to a slope where the snow lay soft and the wind had done them the courtesy of lying down. The incline wasn’t much. It looked like a lesson. It looked like a dare.

"Feet here" Toma said, showing them how to buckle into the straps. "Weight on your knees. But keep them soft. Keep your hips over your boots. Look where you want to go, not where you don’t. And if you fall, fall small."

"Fall small?" Obi repeated, philosophical. "I have only ever fallen large! Or extra-large! Make it a super!"

Raizen went first because he had already decided he should. He set his skis parallel, took a breath that was a bit too long to count as a single breath, and pushed off.

For two seconds the world cooperated. He slid in a straight line. Wind kissed his ears. The snow made that clean, secret sound like soft paper being torn. (I know you all like it) Then the boards crossed, he caught an invisible bump, and ate snow with the determination of a person who had committed to finishing what he started.

He popped up, spit out a snowflake, and said "I meant to do that."

"Ten out of ten" Obi shouted, and then immediately fell over standing still.

Esen took to it like a problem he could solve with confidence alone. He pushed off, knees too stiff, and gained speed much too quickly to be alright. "This is easy!" he shouted just before the world casually removed a patch of snow from under him and he launched into a lopsided cartwheel that ended in applause from himself.

Lynea stood, slid, and kept sliding as if a line in her head had been drawn and she was simply following it. She navigated a small lump with a neat tiny hop, then hit a hidden rock and did a very elegant faceplant that somehow looked like it had been choreographed.

Toma bounced down beside her and held out a hand. "Perfect" he said cheerfully. "You fell small."

"I fell." Lynea corrected, deadpan, letting him pull her up.

Hikari - of course - watched everyone’s mistakes like a scientist cataloguing butterflies. She adjusted her stance without being told. She rolled her shoulders down and back and bent her knees just enough. When she pushed off, she didn’t try to be brave. She tried to be balanced.

She glided.

No dramatics. No speed for the sake of speed. Just a clean line down the slope, a gentle turn at a bush, a slide to a stop with a little flourish of snow. Her scarf streamed behind her like a flag. She didn’t fall. She didn’t even look like falling was a word she recognized.

"Unfair" Esen muttered around a mouthful of jerky.

"It’s rhythm" Hikari said, a little surprised at herself, cheeks pink. "The snow... tells you where the weight goes."

"Witchcraft" Obi concluded.

Feris - untethered for the trial - did not put on skis. She simply angled herself downhill and moved, boots hovering a handspan above the powder, rope trailing behind like a polite tail. "Watch this" she announced, hands behind her back, "the unmatched grace of a woman who refuses to obey."

She drifted past all of them like a dirigible with opinions. At a tiny dip she attempted to hop and spun slowly instead, turning three degrees to the left in a way that made Lynea hide a smile and Raizen cough to disguise one.

"I wanted to do that" Feris said primly, completing the revolution with dignity.

They tried again. And again. Bruises bloomed. Laughter spilled. Toma corrected Raizen’s stance with a tap to his shin. "Looser" he said. "You’re mad at the snow. Stop being mad."

"I’m not -" Raizen began, then saw his own shoulders and conceded by falling smaller the next time.