Peter--Writing using sense data

The boy and the polar bear began to make their journey across the vast glimmering field of snow. The sky above huge and peerlessly blue and, in the distance, their goal, Mt. Sulivan, lay like a mountainous armoured crab, bespattered in snow.

Ned plodded alongside the bear, who padded easily over the white wastes, occasionally pausing, turning his head and patiently waiting for him to catch up. After an hour, Ned was aware that the gradient had become steeper. The wind rose, buffeting him, and he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep his balance. Every step forward now was a great effort and he was falling further and further behind Nochoska.  The temperature too was dropping and the air burned his exposed face. Yet he dare not stop or they would never reach the cover and safety of the Cave of Cragollen before nightfall and he would not survive.  

In places the snow had drifted into long, elevated banks.  It was while trudging along one of these that he stupidly lost his footing, rolling helplessly over and over into a channel.  Nochoska came anxiously sliding down and nudged him encouragingly in the back with his nose.  Ned struggled to pick himself up. When he finally got to his feet the bear was squatting on its haunches before him, waving its head from side to side and inviting him to climb onto his back.

Ned hesitated. His pride was touched. Yet he was so exhausted and there was still far to go, he almost slumped onto Nochoska’s back.  Gripping the shaggy loose hair that lay behind the bear’s neck, he lay across his back, legs straddling over the barrel of his stomach. The thick white coat was rough and warm and the rhythm of the powerful legs comforting as the bear padded tirelessly forward.  Nochoska never paused or hesitate. In fact, to Ned’s discomfort, he began to trot in jerky movements, almost desperately trying to break into a run in spite of his burden.

From between the rump of his shoulders Ned glimpsed the horizon.  His heart sank with dismay. He knew now the reasons for the bear’s urgency.  Ahead of them a dark cloud like a swarm of hornets. A blizzard, driving relentlessly towards them and they were caught helplessly out in the open. The bear in a desperate effort to find shelter was heading for a lava outcropping about a quarter of a mile away.

Too late!  The snow began to dance about them, slipping onto his eyes and cheeks and coating the bear’s fur as, buffeted by the screaming wind, they were brought to a standstill. Now they were engulfed in a storm of furiously whirling, swirling snow. Ned’s slurred shouts were lost in the wind. The bear and everything about him vanished in an overwhelming whiteness and in his mind the contours of reality just dissolved into an ecstatic confusion. His fingers relaxed and almost with happy abandon he went slipping onto the snow, a world of shadows, blue, green and grey, dancing furiously about him.  How long he lay there in this euphoric state he could not tell but then there was just the merest, gleeful sense of sliding irresistibly backwards as though on a child’s slide. “WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”.

Then the white world was transformed  into a kingdom of blackness.. He was being sucked down and down into it.  With a thud that sang  through his senses he came to a halt.  In this stationary state, aware of softness and warmth, enveloped in lovely, lovely heat, he just wanted to nestle, be snug at his ease and sleep, sleep, sleep forever.......

Sighing, Ned rolled onto his side, luxuriating and lost in slumber but some nagging sound disturbing his cosiness would not go away. Reluctantly, he half opened his eyes.  Entombed in darkness, he was now aware of a pervasive smell of damp dog hair and an irritating snoring coming in waves.

Something soft lay at his feet.  He poked at it with his toes and, his face betraying irritation, he lifted his head slightly and peered down. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could make out a whitish outline,  Nochoska, at his feet curled up like a sleeping dog, chest rising and falling and making the most outrageous sounds.  Ned stretched his head up and little by little became aware that he was in a hole the shape of an inverted egg.  With his hand he reached, vaguely out to the wall and scraped. It crumbled in his gloved hand he bent and licked at it - snow. It trickled down his parched throat. He sat up.  All about him was sunk in gloom except at the top –  a glimmering cap, admitting green-blue-white light.