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Copyright Ion Fyr 2022
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The arctic summer’s attempt at twilight was abandoned at two thirty in the morning when the scant stars began to fade. The glaciated peaks to the north of Pool’s camp had already begun glistening golden-orange by quarter to four–Pool could see these from the opening of his shelter.
Once the fire was restarted from last night’s coals, he placed three eggs in the cup, covered with water from a trickle of a stream a few hillocks over and slowly boiled these until hard.
After shelling and downing the eggs, Pool refilled the tin cup with water–taking the opportunity to splash some of the fairly clean water on his face–and while it came to a boil, he picked and scrubbed his teeth with a shaved birch twig. After tea, his supplies were repacked.
Pool ran his fingers through his tangled hair and twisted the ends of his mustache in to his habitual horizontal points without even resorting to wax and donned his hat, pulling the front of the brim down to his brow.
Eying the comfortable-looking slope of the western of two nearby peaks, Pool set out in that direction, winding his way over and around foothills, interspersed with bogs and marshes. Occasionally, a ravine, cut by icy glacial run-off would force him to divert from his path.
The mountain, appearing to sit only a few miles off, took three days to climb.
Each day Pool’s camp became more and more minimal, consisting of three short poles and the tarp. These he was forced to carry or drag after the third day, having crossed beyond the tree line.
Water from the glacial streams was still present, nearly everywhere, but wood for the fires was all but none existent. He had to rely entirely on the hard tack, cold tea–which thank’s to the iodine tablets reacting with the acid in the tea, turned an off-putting purple color, and the remaining eggs, that he had boiled before leaving the trees below (the eggs were easily replenished, even now, as birds and their nests were plentiful.)
Achieving a relatively high point (though not the summit itself), Pool found a vantage point to observe the sea below. The height was sufficient to look down on the sea, and the angle of the seaward slope was much steeper that the one he ascended, providing him with a sufficient overlook to see what might swim near shore, just beyond the crashing waves.
The sky was overcast, a light and uniform grey. Pool could smell a dampness and hoped it did not indicate a coming rain; the nights had been cool and the combination of the altitude and lack of fire had been uncomfortable.
29 July, 1888
The trek has been difficult, but this morning I saw my first of the leviathans. They are truly enormous, rivaling the biggest airships of the Admiralty, even the Flagship.
The waters even one hundred meters off the strand must be a great deal deeper than I would have guessed as these great beasts travel in number there and one cannot imagine how this could occur if the depth were less than a hundred meters, this being my calculation of the girth of the largest of them. What greater sizes might be possible further from land, traversing the oceanic depths?
Most of the monsters appear to be of a single nature. These possess massive fins, in place of forward legs, and slightly smaller trailing fins attached to a massive tail. The limbs are arrayed as those of river dolphins or whales, a mammalian feature supported by massive, towering jets of watery exhaust shot upwards from each of the herd with regular period. Smaller ones–still enormous in their own right–swam with the greater ones, suggesting juveniles…
How I wish I had one of those Daguerreotype cameras with a polarized filter to erase the solar glare from the water…
Pool’s descriptions in his notebook were accompanied by several detailed sketches.
The observations lasted that afternoon and again the following morning. Reconsidering his career as a constable, keeping order on the streets of Londbridge, Pool imagined himself as a naturalist-adventurer. Yes, he should purchase a camera and travel and document the oddities of the world. I should resign the constabulary and join the Baroness on her adventures…
#sci-fi #science fiction #fantasy #fiction #writing #time travel
Ion Fyr 