Page 13 of There's an Elf in My Cockpit

We were beneath the ice and a single lantern lit up the rather narrow space we were in. Vi was sitting on her knees at my hip, her long hair a wild mess around her shoulders, her cap missing and the snow goggles dangling around her neck from the strap. She looked like she was in one piece, but she had dark, bruise-like circles beneath her eyes and her shoulders were down like she was carrying the weight of the world on them.

The glow of her green eyes on my face warmed me, attentive, filled with worry. Looked like my Elf really cared about me. I knew she had a soft heart, she was as protective of the teens as I was and she’d only just met them, but care about me? That had been a much more prickly affair. I hated that she’d been so scared while I was out, but I kind of liked it too.

“Wait, ice beast?” I asked, furrowing my brow in confusion, I had no recollection of fighting such a thing. Then only the faintest memory stirred and I tilted my head down to look at my leg. A swatch of bandages was tied around the left one but I didn’t feel any pain beneath it.

“Your pants got torn,” Vi explained when she saw me look, “But somehow neither of us got hurt even though you actually climbed on top of that thing and it was huge.” She sounded impressed and a little like she thought I was insane and now I was sad I had no memory of the fight, it sounded like it had been pretty cool.

“So we’re at the bottom of the crevice where we fell?” I asked carefully, trying to snap myself out of this slightly incoherent, easily distracted mode and back into gear. We needed to climb out and get to help but the thought alone was making another wave of nausea rise in my belly; that was really bad news.

I eyed the low ceiling of ice above our heads, gleaming nearly black in the light of the lantern. That looked like we were down very deep, packed beneath a thick layer of ice. It was mirror smooth too, as if it had been painstakingly polished which was impossible and had to be some kind of strange natural phenomenon.

Vi’s voice got a little shudder to it as if she was recalling something bad when she replied. “No, Elpherian discovered where we fell and demanded they excavate to retrieve our bodies. I had no choice but to move us along the crevice and hope they didn’t find us.” It sounded like a bad memory and when I took better stock of our surroundings I was seeing the signs that what she said was true.

I was lying on a sleeping bag with a rope attached in a loop to two corners, a makeshift sled. Only one backpack was still with us, so she must have condensed our supplies. Reflexively I moved to grab the pack and take stock myself, wanting to be sure that we had the things we needed to survive and get out of here.

“Where’s the handheld healing device? The tissue regenerator?” It was a very essential piece of gear out here and I couldn’t imagine that she’d left it behind, even if she was in a hurry. It was obvious she’d dumped out all our spare clothes for instance, which sucked but it was a luxury we could afford to lose.

She gave me a flat, exasperated look, clearly offended that I even asked. My head was spinning from moving when I shouldn’t but I still grinned widely in response. “Your fat ass broke it when you landed on it,” she informed me and I laughed, clutching at my aching ribs. No wonder I was in this bad a shape, she hadn’t been able to speed up the healing process. That must have really freaked her out.

I was too sore and tired to really worry about it, we needed to figure out if there was still daylight up above and what our best way out of here was. If something collapsed nearby, or it started to snow really hard we could end up getting cut off from our oxygen and suffocate. Patting my pockets, I located the hand scanner in one of them and thankfully this one still functioned.

My eyebrows shot up in surprise when I analyzed the readings, pulling painfully at a crust of dried blood and a cut on my temple. I reached up to touch the spot gingerly while I told myself to double-check what I was seeing.

“Vi, we’re like, almost right on top of those energy readings. How far did you drag me?” I asked. Reaching out I touched one of her biceps and gave it a gentle squeeze through the thick puffy coat she wore. She winced like that hurt, while she helplessly shrugged.

“I don’t know, I suck at directions, I just put my head down and dragged you as far as I could before I gave up.” She tilted her head and looked away her chest going up and down in a few deep breaths when she struggled to calm herself. My heart went out to her, she’d done good, but those hours while I was unconscious must have been so horrible mentally and so physically tough. Last I remembered checking these readings we still had ten miles to go. When I made the scanner check for the nearest access to the surface it indicated at least half that distance.

Vi was so slender and small that I couldn’t imagine that she’d dragged my big body along for almost five miles. But the numbers didn’t lie and I was extremely impressed, and grateful. As a dead weight, I knew I should have been impossible for her to carry. What she’d done was humanly impossible for a girl her size although adrenaline absolutely did crazy things. Good thing I was trapped down here with an Elf and she was made of much sterner stuff than she looked.

Sharing some food and water made my stomach rebel at first but then it thankfully seemed to settle. Getting to my feet was a chore, the world seesawing wildly around me, the food nearly coming back up, and my skin breaking out in clammy sweat from pain and nausea. Standing was only possible as long as I kept one shoulder against the ice to help steady me.

Vi took the backpack, she took all our supplies onto her slender shoulders and I felt angry that I couldn’t manage more to help. She was already so exhausted, she’d done so much to get my ass to safety. I knew she blamed herself for getting us into this mess, but I owed her my life. As far as I was concerned the scales were balanced. It was going to be my turn to take care of her for a while, just as soon as the world stopped spinning.

Based on the readings, it made more sense to try to approach the energy signatures from down here than to backtrack all the way and attempt what was likely a very dangerous climb with a possible ambush lying in wait. As we walked, or rather she walked and I shuffled like an invalid, Vi told me about the tunnels she’d passed along the way. She’d made the choice to keep going in the direction she’d picked and keep to the biggest passages and so far that had worked out.

After only a hundred feet I had to pause, my legs trembling and the spinning intensifying. The ice was black above our heads but at our sides and below our feet it shimmered white, reflecting the lantern light back at me in a dizzying manner. The snow goggles from around Vi’s neck helped but now it put pressure on the sizable bump on my temple, not ideal but it would have to work.

The tunnel was aimed straight at where we needed to go until suddenly it made a sharp turn to the right. With no choice but to simply keep going, I shuffled around the corner and stumbled, frantically grasping with one hand for my belt, for the laser pistol I usually kept there. Coming up empty I blocked Vi when she casually stepped around me and then she laughed, “Easy big guy, it’s frozen in the ice. Can’t hurt us.”

My vision was spotty and blurry, even with the tinted glasses to protect them. I struggled to comprehend was my eyes were telling me but Vi was calm so I carefully shuffled after her. Past the huge wraith-like shape with the rows of glowing yellow eyes. Closer, I could see that she was right, the creature was trapped in the ice, frozen in time.

Vi had seen shapes like these before or she wouldn’t be so calm now, how had she responded to the first one she’d seen? I really, really hated that I hadn’t been there for her. But, I had to admit that when we came across a second one as the tunnel doubled back, they were pretty cool too. To look at a little slice of time, when these creatures were all frozen in one freaky flash freeze, preserving them so perfectly that they almost looked alive.

We were still going in the right direction but I was struggling more and more to keep going. My body just wanted to lie down and sleep, and I knew that once I gave in to that urge, I wouldn’t be getting up for a long time. We needed help, I needed medical attention because this concussion was a bad one, I didn’t know how long I’d last until I passed out.

Vi had been trying to raise the teens on my com sporadically but she had no luck getting through to them. The ice above us had to be thick enough to block the signal, or something else, like our nearness to those energy signatures, was blocking it. When my legs finally gave out, I had to make sure that Vi knew to forge ahead to a spot where she could call Darth for aid.

To distract myself from how miserable I felt I tried talking, or rather, I tried to get Vi to talk. “Hey, so you know my full name but how about you tell me yours. I think we’re well on our way to more than just a casual acquaintance, aren’t we?” I was dying to know if it really was just Vi or if that was a nickname. I’d learned that most aliens didn’t really shorten names the way we humans did, so sometimes it confused them when I said Olly was fine too. Darth for instance found it bizarre at first but he seemed to enjoy calling me by my nickname now.

She didn’t immediately answer but came over to tuck herself beneath one of my arms, steadying me as I wobbled along on limp legs. I didn’t want to lean on her when she was already so tired, but this was no time to be stubborn either. I knew I was in a bad way, my vision was getting worse and worse, even with the goggles, and the pounding pain in my head was only growing.

“It’s Vixen Virliales, actually,” she said after the silence had dragged on for a while. I was stuck on the fact that her first name was actually Vixen but it was obvious she’d gone somewhere else, even if I could no longer read her facial expression.

In an effort to distract her, I started to talk, “Vixen huh? That’s one of Santa’s reindeer, why are you like the epitome of Christmas? Which is my favorite celebration, could you get any more perfect?” I was tickled pink by the thought that she really was named like one of the reindeer, what were the odds? I found an elf dressed like one of Santa’s workers in my cockpit only a couple of days before Christmas and she was even called Vixen?

I was glad that I made her laugh and then she demanded I explain to her what all my nonsense meant and I tried to explain Santa and Christmas. I was pretty sure I was starting to turn incoherent, babbling away about the North Pole and presents when my thoughts were starting to grow hazy. Vi kept urging me to keep talking but at this point, I was pretty sure she was just making me talk to make sure I stayed awake.

She confiscated the scanner I was using to track our progress and I didn’t protest. The last thing we needed was for me to send us in the wrong direction, and though Vi said she was horrible at finding her way, she’d done fine so far. Better her than me right now, considering everything was gray around the edges and black was creeping in.

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