The Ski Slopes Closed
A short fiction for a prompt — choose your own adventure story.
I breathed deeply. leaning on my skis as though they were a wizard’s staff while I caught my breath. I’d been potholing up this mountain, the last hundred or meters or more. Every step I took I sunk deeper and deeper. It was past my knee now and “walking” like this was exhausting.
I turned my head and yelled down to Jordan “Maybe we can just ski from here?”
Despite being further downhill from me, and having the advantage of standing in my footsteps Jordan looked exhausted, she took a minute to catch her breath first before yelling back “No way! I’m not doing this walk again. If I only get one run I want it to be a good one, we’re headed for the top!”
I turned back looking uphill again. Jordan was delusional. This wasn’t some short beginner ski slope, this was a mountain. We wouldn’t reach the top if we walked till nightfall. Still she did have a bit of a point. If we were only going to do this once it’d be worth going a bit higher, even if it’s not all the way to the top.
Still, looking up at the still ski lifts I could see them disappear over a crest in the hill ahead of us, and I doubted that we would even make it to the top of this run.
It was a real shame that they weren’t running, normally you could get to the top of this run in ten minutes, ski down much faster and do it on repeat all day, getting lots of skiing in. But they were closed today. And we’d come so far and we only have today free to ski, it’s back to work tomorrow. So we thought we’d do our best to get ourselves up the slope and ski as well as could.
I took another step forward, sinking in the snow up to my mid-thigh. I could feel little bits of snow seeping into my boots. My snow gear was made to swish down the hill at full speed before stopping in at the warm café on the mountainside for a hot chocolate, not for potholing through snow.
But there wasn’t much else to do, so I kept going, one foot at a time, sinking deeper and deeper into the snow. Step, Step, Stop and Breath, Step, Step, Stop and Breath.
I was just taking another step, ready to rest again when the snow more than just sunk beneath me, it completely collapsed.
For a moment I waved my arms around, snow tumbled downwards with me and as I tried to work out which way I was facing and remember what to do in an avalanche.
But instead of finding myself buried in snow when I stopped, I found myself lying under an old stone archway.
Green moss covered giant stone brickwork, droplets of water melted down from the snow above and puddles formed in cracks on ancient forgotten pavement.
Beyond the archway I could see a tunnel, and more old stone brickwork.
“Jordan!” I called looking up to where I had come, “Jordan?” My voice echoed back out from the tunnel, but the snow above me dampened the sound. I could hear my voice, shake and all, reverberating back to me, but I doubted that Jordan had heard me at all.
I could see the light from where I fell through, but it was a blue-tinted light, the snow had fallen in after me, leaving a weak spot, but not a hole.
I started feeling around in my pockets to see if I had left anything useful in them from last ski season. And luckily I had a headlamp and a few really old muesli-bars in there. I mentally thanked myself for being so unorganised that I had these things and turned the headlamp on.
I shone it down the tunnel illuminating what was clearly some very large ruins. It could even be an entire forgotten city, that’s been buried under the snow for hundreds of years.
Or it could be a tunnel and a few old brick walls.
“Hello?” I called not expecting a reply, and not receiving one.
I looked up at the way I had come in, and down the dark tunnel, wondering which way I should go? Should I wait for Jordan? Would she be able to follow my footsteps and find me? or should I try to climb out? or should I venture further into the tunnel and explore the ruins?
Thanks to Chelsea Marie for the challenge and prompt:
Writing Challenge:
Use a random location generator to discover the setting of your story this week.
I found this generator, and got the location: Ski Slope (which was a challenge to fit with any of the prompts :))
Prompt 2
Write a story using these three items/concepts: forgotten, echoes, ruins.
I did not intend to make a choose your own adventure story, (I love them but they are so much more work) but that’s the way the story went so….
There will be options, to click on very soon. (they are already mostly written)
