underworld

Falling.

You never know quite how long for until you hit the bottom.

But Kayuktuk did not feel pain. In fact, she did not feel much at all aside from a crushing weightlessness, breathlessness, as if she were suspended in perpetual motion. She twitched a paw, then another, flexing each limb in turn. Luckily, they all seemed to work though her movements were sluggish.

Opening her eyes revealed a world of murky darkness, light filtering from above in misty streams of pale yellow. Her chest tightened, hit with a sinking realisation. She was underwater.

Kicking out strongly, the northwoman broke the lake's surface in great, gasping gulps, hauling herself onto the shore in a bedraggled heap of red fur as she squinted confused in the midday sun. The great lake where she'd emerged glittered, the land surrounding rose in frosted peaks. While it certainly wasn't home, Kayuktuk shook the water from her pelt in thought. What was this place?

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Assume dialogue is in Atkan Aleut!

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Bitter cold. The kind that sunk into your bones and slowed your heart. Ice that frosted over your fur and hurt the skin beneath. 

It was from this that the creature of the cold formed, a statue of ice on the shore of a mostly frozen lake. A silent sentinel standing over the woman that had just crawled from the freezing waters, breathing hard and heavy. 

Only then, did the ice crack. Only a little at first — one crack here, another there, and then more and more of them as the ice began to flake off to reveal a wolf.

A wolf of bearish stature, of visceral nature. Her first breath was deep, the outflow pluming with draconic heat. She started shaking, slow, flinging most of the ice off and away from her body before gold eyes fell to look at the waterlogged creature before her. 

“You went swimming.”
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