On Shatterdive Alley [Short Story]
Prompt: You live in a world where snowflakes have always been the size of The Empire State Building. You’re moving from Florida to Alaska.
“No GPS. Again.” Lavinia snaps her sat-phone shut and slips it back into her pockets, continuing her trek. “Bad signal, too. You sure we’re heading the right way?”
The ice under her boots go crunch, crunch, as eighty kilograms of equipment, winter clothing, and scientist trek over cold frozen earth. Her body aches from the gear and the biting winds. She squints at her newfound partner already walking a few meters ahead.
Her headset crackles. “I’m sure.” Sylvia’s voice cuts through the whistling. “Welcome to Shatterdive Alley — home of the world’s largest snowflakes. No GPS here, or anywhere ten clicks north. The snowcloud will block all satellite signals until-” she grunts, “this- weather system- passes!”
“Damn it. I hope you’re right.”
The snowcloud ahead slowly rotates, weaving the sky into a monstrous whirlpool. Sylvia points at the silhouette of a cliff face. At a distance, the shelter seems small and insignificant against the weather, but it doesn’t matter. Lavinia nods. Together, they trek against wind that carry icy shards that shatter against the two’s headgear, plinking on helmet and goggles, thudding softly on parka. They reach the bottom of the cliff and drop their bags.
Lavinia sighs. “How… much farther? Silv?”
Sylvia eyes the sky. “Looking right up, I can start to see where the snowcloud begins.” She sits down on the ice. “I think… ten, fifteen minutes.”
“And ETA on Snowdrop?” Lavinia moves the bottle of water closer, slipping the mask off. “We don’t want to miss this one.”
Sylvia unfolds the piece of paper from her pocket. “Uh… let’s see. Thirteen twenty is… nine minutes away,” glancing at her wristwatch. “If we’re quick, we might be able to catch a landing. Prime sample takes five hours for collection, get away before the snowflake melts in eight.”
“Great.” Lavinia joins her in sitting. “Three minutes break, then we dash for it. Sounds good?” she asks, looking to her left with a smile.
“Sure.” Sylvia glances back.
A thought. Then, she smirks. “Enjoying glaciology, huh?”
Lavinia scoffs. “Nah. This whole thing is piss.” She stares at Sylvia for a moment before exploding into stifled chuckling. “Okay, okay. Fine. Maybe a little.”
“Miss home yet?”
“No… not yet.” Lavinia’s breaths create wisps. She twirls a finger through them. “Not… used to this, though.”
Silv puts her arms on her hips. “What? The weather?”
“No. Not just the weather,” Lavinia answers. “This. All of this.” She gestures at the icy woods around them, eyes scanning frozen remnants of rain on leaves. Her eyes move to the meters-thick frozen lake below the two. “It’s… different. That’s for sure.” Her eyes drift to the cell above. “And the storm. And the cold snap. And the idea that, once every day or two, some random storm system can drop a four-hundred foot block of fractal ice somewhere in the woods.” She chuckles again. “I mean, come on! Don’t you think it’s nuts?!”
“Nuts?” Sylvia’s smirk grows a bit wider. “I think it’s cool. And fascinating. And researchable.” She leans forward. “Why’d you think I chose glaciology?”
“I don’t know.” Lavinia looks away. “Because you’re local. Maybe.”
“Psh. Nah. Most folks here leave at the first chance they get. Nobody wants to stay. When you’re not a tourist… this place, the snowflakes. All the problems… they all kind of scare you away.”
Lavinia looks back at Sylvia, brows raised, only to find her staring off into the distance. Sylvia, on the other hand, catches a pair of curious eyes staring at her.
“Fuck. Nevermind.” Sylvia shakes her head. “And you? What’s your story, Nia? Fresh out of U Miami Meteorology? What the heck are you doing here?”
“Jeez.” It’s Lavinia’s turn to shake her head. “I don’t know. Moved out of Tallahassee, went to college, then never looked back.” Her eyes begin to drift. “Looking for something, I guess.”
“Hm.” Sylvia nods. The two stay silent for a moment, waiting under the shelter of rocks. Finally, Sylvia’s wristwatch rings. She stands up at its call. “Come on.” Silv reaches her arm out, then, “Let’s find the thing you’re looking for.” A pull.
Nia and Silv brush off the flakes from their coats, pick up the hulking packs, and begin their trek once more.
A few minutes pass by as voices get silenced by winds growing harsher. Lavinia finds herself digging traction cleats deeper into ice, if only to make her feel safer. Sylvia grows a grimace, fighting against the wind. Ahead, a whirlpool turns into cosmic maelstrom as neon blue lightning courses, telltale signs of incoming snowdrop and catastrophe. The snowcloud forms an inverted cyclone, and at the center of it all, Lavinia spots a tiny blue crystal forming — a dot being struck by blue bolts over and over and over.
“Holy… is that… snowflake formation? That’s it, right? Anomalous weather phenomena?”
A voice crackles through the wind. “Yeah. First time’s always impressive.” Then, without skipping a beat: “Especially a hypercell.” The voice pauses. “Takes me back, huh. National Weather Service was wrong. This is gonna be a big one.”
“A big one?” Lavinia feels her breathing grow thinner. “Meaning?”
“Theory says large ionized updrafts sap oxygen and center the lightning bolts toward the flake-” The voice on the other end slips, gasping for air. “Agh! Crap.”
“You okay?!”
“Yeah! Just-” she stands back up- “bit my lip a bit. This goddamn storm. In practical terms- huge seismic shock on landing, and a six hundred meter formation. Or more!”
“I don’t speak meters!”
“Seven football fields, dammit! We’re looking at a massive one!”
Lavinia’s eyes widen. “Wait, wait- what does that mean for us?! We gotta turn back, right-”
“No.” Sylvia spits out blood, then stands straight, unmoving. “We brace for impact, and then prime the best sample known to science.” She squints her eyes at the massive, spinning cloud. She clenches her fists.
A hand taps Sylvia’s left shoulder, and Lavinia comes over. “How the heck do we brace? We’re not even on land yet, and we-”
A loud, ear-piercing crack! sounds from the snowflake. The two look up, and see a series of lighting bolts hammering the snowflake, sending pieces of snow flying about. It begins to fall.
“Snowdrop.” Sylvia’s breathing quickens. She turns to Lavinia- “We need to get off this lake, NOW-” and points at the treeline ahead. “RUN!”
The two immediately sprint ahead. Lavinia struggles to keep up with Sylvia, whose body marches ahead even with half her weight’s worth of scanning and sampling equipment. Lavinia stumbles a bit, but scrambles ahead and sprints for shore. From a distance, Sylvia shouts, “Come on! You don’t want to be on ice during Snowdrop!” From the corner of her eye, she sees the massive snowflake as it tumbles from the sky downward.
The headset crackles. “Kid! Get your ass here! Now!”
“I- I can’t! I can’t run on ice as-”
“-crap, crap crap crap. Nia! Snowfall in five!” Sylvia’s shouting pierces through. “Get down! NOW!”
Not knowing what to do, Lavinia dives down towards solid ice.
A loud thud reverberates through the forest ahead. For a split second, nothing is heard, but what follows is the rushing sound of trees being decimated by a shockwave, wood and bark breaking under pressure, sending splinters outward. Lavinia looks up to see Sylvia huddled behind a log on the ground, but as she does so, a rumbling arrives from beneath. Suddenly, the meters-deep ice begins to shatter into large chunks, shards and icebergs being sent upwards by the impact. Lavinia feels light, and all her breath is taken away as the chunk of ice under her gets launched up. A moment after, and she finds nothing under her but air. She waves her arms around to try to grasp something. Anything.
One look upwards and she sees a block of wood tumbling at her.
Then, black.
“Snowfell, thirteen fourty five. Sixteen February, twenty twenty-one. Snowflake is… Category Five. Near-perfect fractalline structure, shape A-Two… although, since this is a quasi-hypercell, I can’t really say. Ionised gases trapped within, dissipating in four minutes. Prime sample… obtaining.”
Lavinia’s eyes open to a starry night. She tries to move her arms, but is met by an immediate jolt of pain. A silhouette of something large stands above her. A warmth covers her — two wooly parkas, stacked on top of one another — and she looks to her immediate left, towards the source of orange light. Sylvia sits on rock, campfire in front of her, a pot boiling.
“What… happened?”
“You passed out. Blunt force trauma. I couldn’t get you the attention you needed, so I put you under for a little bit more for rest.” Sylvia pours something into a bowl. “Drink. It’s oxtail soup. I’ll get you checked in later for any permanent brain damage.”
Sylvia brings the bowl closer, and immediately is met by an enthusiastic head.
Lavinia drinks the food up, gulps, then sighs, crashing backwards. “The… the- snowflake. Where is it?” Her head aches, but Lavinia doesn’t care.
Sylvia chuckles. “Look to your right, kiddo.”
Lavinia turns her head and is met by a beautiful sight. A massive, sprawling structure of ice — snow, they called it — stands in front of her. She eyes the fractalline patterns on the surface, diamonds and tree branches and weaving patterns of lines that reach deeper inside into hollow containers of a magnificent, slightly sparkling blue gas. The flake shines under full moonlight, enhanced by the glowing from within. All in all…
“It’s like… a fallen star.”
Lavinia hears Sylvia exploding into laughter behind her. She giggles in consideration.
“Heh. Yeah. No, you’re right. Once you look at a hypercell — even a fake one — nothing ever matches up to it.”
“Even a fake one?”
“Oh, yeah.” Sylvia moves closer to Lavinia. “This is only Cat Five. Extremely rare, but when you do the job weekly, it really don’t seem as rare anymore. Everyone, though… everyone knows the Category Six that decimated Anchorage.”
“Now that’s a hypercell.”
“Yeah. Tenth recorded in modern history. And let me tell you something — I had the chance to see the ninth.”
“The ninth?” Lavinia turns around. “You’ve seen a real hypercell?”
“Yeah. Nineteen eighty-six. I was… five, by then.” Sylvia smiles. “Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.” Lavinia looks at Sylvia’s smile as it slowly grows into a beaming grin, but it is suddenly replaced by a puzzling look. Lavinia turns her head, raising her brows, and just as quickly, the look disappears.
Sylvia pats Lavinia’s shoulder, then stands up. Turning around, she pulls out a pack of cigarettes — then, walking away, she hollers, “Enjoy the snowflake, kid!”
“Yeah.” Lavinia looks back at the towering sculpture of snow. “I’ll… enjoy it.”
She rests under the glimmering blue.
