The ice-white plains stretch ahead. Her shadow extends behind, elongated in the low-lying sun. The snow crunches under her feet. Then again, and again, and again. Her tracks grow with every step.

She drags a tarp-wrapped burden atop a curved wooden sled—one designed for downhill dashes and children’s smiles. It’s just her, the weighed down sled and kilometers of desolation.

The move had been his idea. His environmental job as mother nature's personal on call doctor demanded it. While measuring the receding ice floes hadn't been her calling, she went with him to the small town. Relationships demand sacrifice, after all.

The memory of when the two first met was ingrained in her skull. The woman, a friend of a friend, and the man, a charming researcher whose passion inspired those around him. She remembers her neon hair and wool-white skin on that frigid spring day. They had become friends quickly.

The past burns in her gut now, keeping her warmer than the furs she wears. Her pace increases. Plumes of breath bloom around her sharp features with each huff. Even after years of being out here, days of monitoring trap lines and snowshoeing under the sun, the hike is excruciating.

The sled-burden pulls at her, and she continues to pull at it.

The two of them had spent many days on the ice together. They measured the impact of the world on the world. She recalls the meals they ate afterward, still tired from being out all afternoon. Big steaming stews made with love and care. She relished the pleasure he showed with each mouthful, exhaustion and joy on his sunburnt face. There was a simple pleasure in knowing you could provide. It’s why she learned how to trap, to fire a rifle, to skin.

Her destination is close. Although the landscape ahead is indistinguishable from the past twenty kilometers, she senses it in her sinew—unless that’s just frostbite settling in deep. Her chest heaves and every inch of her protests the ongoing pilgrimage. Yet she is steadfast.

She arrives. Gloves would be best, but she wants to feel it. Each swing of the prybar rattles her wrists. Her hands start to bleed almost immediately. She pictures her bones trembling and chipping along with the ice. Her blood congeals, freezing her to the instrument. Two objects become one. She finally hits water and begins the work of widening the hole.

A memory she’ll never shake gives her strength: flesh on flesh. Their arms enveloping each other and their skin pressed together. Two becoming one. A mess of windburned cheeks and neon hair.

She'd come home a day early from her trapline, taking in the scene of the two scientists from the doorway of their small cabin. A man she’d considered a soul mate; a woman she’d considered a friend. An icy day of stripping furs behind her and the fire of revelation in front.

The sound of the other woman’s scream still clings to her. The look of sheer terror beneath her drapery of neon, sweat-damp bangs. Her eyes bulging wider as she watched the violence: a wife plunging a skinning knife into her husband, blood pouring from his neck as his heat emptied from the wound. Dick gone limp, His lips opened and closed like a fish hooked from an ice-hole.

At times, she wonders what those last words would have been, if not drowned out by a mouthful of blood. She was happy they had died on his tongue. Unfortunately, the stuttering pleas of the other woman would haunt her forever. She hadn’t been as easy.

She bends over the sled. Her hands unwrap the congealed package of entangled limbs, rolling it all onto the ice. Two bodies. Yes, all accounted for. For some reason, her husband’s eyes are askew, robbing him of any last shred of dignity. Death is an ugly animal, especially on the ice. At least out here in the bitter cold, the odors are kept at bay.

Weights are secured with two efficient knots, and she slides the remains into the hole in the ice. The planet swallows them whole. The sled goes next. The opening will freeze over soon. It won’t melt in the thaw, at least for now. Each year the melt worsens, but hopefully, it will hold long enough. For how long, she doesn’t know. She isn’t a scientist.

“Good.” She sighs and turns back the way she came. Her dark hair twists in the breeze.