Thawed, windblown, and re-frozen, the ice was smoother than it might have been, but still far trickier to skate on than a frozen millpond. Nico leaned into the wind flowing down the glacier, blades of her skates tilted towards the edge.
A powerful jump took her over a narrow crevasse and onto a higher block of ice. Her breath was ripped away too quickly to fog, and she felt too alive to mind the cold air cutting into her lungs.
Still, she wasn’t crazy enough to stay when the ice below started to moan. It was her cue to race to the flank of the glacier and scramble up the moraine.
Breathing hard and still grinning, she only turned when she reached solid rock.
While she unstrapped the skates from her boots, the glacier started calving. A block rose and tilted a little.
Nico laughed when on its surface, gleaming in the sunlight just before it fell, she could see her own tracks, and congratulated herself to not getting too careless.