Fire In Ice

Dr. Martel Da Mar is the leading scientist in glacial hydrology. He also has a problem. He cannot touch people without turning them to ice. Don’t ask why, it’s a long story. Since he is Gaiian and has a three-hundred-year lifespan, he knows he will be a long and lonely existence. He has accepted his fate in life and throws all of his energies into his work studying an unknown heat source that has melted a glacial lake, leaving a few blocks of ice in the center of the lake. His tests show the glacial melt can’t be dismissed as global warming. He soon discovers something in one of the remaining blocks of ice radiates an unusual type of heat signature. This something is an angel of fire. She is trapped and needs his help, but releasing her could place the Amazon Rainforest in Jeopardy.
Princess R’ibiezzah wakes from a cold lonely confinement to find life, as she knows it, has irrevocably changed. First of all, she is trapped in a block of ice. Second of all a brooding dragon is attached to her hip. Third, the man she’s met in her dreams is on the outside and cannot release her. And finally, some damn fool goes and steals the block of ice with her in it. This sort of thing can piss a girl off, especially one who has a dragon on her side.

“Release me!”
Ribi’s voice echoed in the cold confines of her prison. The words repeated themselves a few more times as they bounced off the cracks and fissures in the glacial ice. She raked her fingers across the scales of the dragon, the N’fasi Aido Hwedo, coiled around her waist. It constricted, and the pocket of air in her lungs escaped, issuing her ultimate plea. “Let me die…”
The ice closed in on them again, neutralizing the heat of the dragon once more. It was the heat that melted the ice, allowing her to move for one brief moment and making it possible to voice her defiance before they returned to the cold stasis of the glacier. Ice crystals formed around her. They cracked, shimmered, and molded to her slender form. Moonlight filtered down through the blue layers of ice, bringing with it the ghosts of her lost life.
Somehow the dragon sustained her and kept her alive.
Ribi closed her eyes and floated, suspended from above and below by the ice. Dreams were her escape. She dreamt of endless nights swimming under the ocean waves, occasionally rising to stare at the Milky Way as it spanned across the sky. Her people, the Gaiians, were half sea spirit and half human. They grew gills down their back to breathe in water, but the gills disappeared when they were on land. They lived their lives on land, but she preferred the water and spent as much time as possible in the sea.
Now, she was frozen in an endless pool of glacial ice. She deserved this fate, her pride brought her to this end. She was convinced she could control the dragon, and no one could tell her otherwise. She sought it out and found it deep in the Sahara Desert. It merged with her, bringing its fire and mind-numbing power.
Her emotions became erratic. Anger took away her rational, reasonable thoughts. Even worse, her touch was toxic. She burned most things her hand grazed, including people, making her an outcast within her own tribe. The loneliness and rage shredded what little control she had. On the day their tribe was attacked and their children taken, her temper flared to new heights. She attacked everything and everyone, including her sister, who tried to stop her. She was too far gone when they fought fire against fire. The fight ended in an explosion, and a bright ball of red and white heat threw her up into the heavens.
Then she fell.
She landed in a glacier where the cold ice quelled the all-consuming heat of the dragon.
Ribi died that day. Except for one thing… She had consciousness in death. She felt pain and the sensation of falling. She felt the ice close over and hold them fast. Crystals formed and latticed around them, creating an impenetrable cocoon. The dragon shielded her, kept her alive. Its power was that great.
Time passed, and the environment around her changed. It was slight and imperfect at first, but the change was there. The temperature was rising. The dragon sensed the change and took advantage of it. Power pulsed and it began to pull energy from their surroundings. This allowed the ice around her to melt enough for her to wake and scream.
“Let me go!”
Her words set off a sonic blast that moved through the strata of ice rattling and shaking its way up and out to the night sky. The surrounding mountains amplified and pushed the sound up to the heavens.

*****

Turbulence, sudden and severe, hit the plane as it flew over the mountains. It punctuated an otherwise smooth flight to Punta Arenas, Chile. Dr. Martel Da Mar sat up from a sound sleep, his heartbeat a fast staccato, and he took deep breaths to slow it down. The pitch of noise from the jet engine grew louder, and the plane wobbled in the air as if it dangled from a string. He grabbed the armrest and gritted his teeth.
A soft chime floated through the cabin, followed by the captain’s voice alerting the passengers to fasten their seatbelts. Martel pried his hand away from the armrest to cinch the seat belt tighter. He was a grade A nervous flyer. Bumpy flights usually ran his pulse up to extreme speeds, but this time his heart raced for a different reason.
He heard a voice before the aircraft began its erratic dance in the sky.
Let me go.
The words echoed in his head and slowly dissipated, receding down a long, hollow tube. A woman’s voice.
The voice came with an image of fire. Lots of fire. She stood in the center of the conflagration, her hair rising with the flame. The dark coils had streaks of gold and red highlights which made it impossible to tell where her hair stopped and the flames started. Fire cast a golden glow on her nut-brown skin and enhanced the tense gaze in her eyes.
She was fighting for her life.
A shadow rose behind her. It wrapped around and pulled in tight, constricting her chest, and cutting off further speech. The flame expanded high in the sky, right into the path of their aircraft. His mind’s eye saw a sonic wave; the plane experienced turbulence.
The image of the shadow shook him to his core. He felt the heat and power moving off of it in waves. The effect sent tremors through his body. But what of the woman? What was it doing to her? The look on her face was a combination of defiance and exhaustion, as if she had fought a battle for a long time.
Martel pressed the button at the end of the armrest and his seat moved upright to meet his back. He looked around to see if anyone heard the voice. The cabin was dim. Most people were reclined and asleep. A soft light illuminated a passenger up front who was reading a magazine. A man across the aisle snored. The whine of the engines had returned to normal, their hum muted but felt throughout the cabin.
Relax, Martel. It was only a dream.