Get changed quickly

"If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for."

- Florence Scovel Shinning

Morginn thought that she must have broken some kind of record for speed showers when she made it back to her room. The realisation that this would be the last chance for her to feel properly clean for who knew how long once she left had dawned on her as she made her way back down from the range, and she wished she would have had the time to savour the luxurious feeling of warm water running over her skin for a little longer.

Some of the tension washed its way out of her shoulders as the water flowed over them, and she could feel her neck loosening as they relaxed. She hadn't realised how tightly they had been knotted until the water hit them.

Liquid water was almost non existent up top. Plenty of solid water though. The snow on the ground could be melted easily enough if you needed something to drink, once it had been packed it into a canteen, but even Morginn wasn't brave enough to unwrap herself to try and wash. Anything she melted would be frozen again within seconds, and an ice bath wasn't much fun.

After allowing herself another couple of minutes under the tap, she finally summoned the will to turn off the warm water and step out. Skin prickled like goose flesh in the chill of the room as the cold air hit it, causing her to shiver gently. The cold air and her were old friends, but she drew the line at standing naked in it. Quickly towelled herself dry, she slipped into a fresh, and thankfully warm, dry suit.

With a new pair of boots on her feet, and after pulling the jacket that smelt like it had been washed the most recently from the closet, she grabbed her pack from the side of the bed. Most of what she was planning to take out with her had been packed before showering to minimise the risk of anything going into the pack damp. All that remained was for her gloves and goggles to be dumped haphazardly on the top.

Casting one last look around the room to see if anything had been forgotten in the rush, she decided that she was as ready as he was going to be. Time to go. Slipping out of the door, she let it slide closed softly behind her as she made her way up to meet Alyssia in the Gren.

She found her perched on the edge of that poor couch, deep in conversation with Brick when she arrived. Well, a fairly one sided kind of conversation considering who she was talking to, but it was the thought that counts.

With a soft knock on the edge of the door she let herself in, causing both of the occupants to look up as their attention was caught.

"Not interrupting am I?"

"Not at all," Alessia said, rising to her feet to greet her daughter. "I don't make it up here very often, and it makes a change to be able to check everything's running smoothly in person."

True enough, being the Queen Bee meant she didn't make it out of the hive as often as she might like anymore. Power always came at a price, and the price of being in command came with the cost of being kept where they could protect her.

Morginn smiled at Brick, knowing he would have put up with any amount of interference from Alessia if it was going to mean not having to spend his double shift staring a hole in the wall through boredom.

"Sorry Brick," she said," but I'm going to need to take a rain check on having that drink. Something bigger than you has come up."

"I know. It's fine. The Boss was just filling me in about Dagaz. You gonna bring him home safe right?" Wow, Alessia must be a good influence on him if he was stringing sentences together.

"Kicking and screaming if I have to. Here, catch," Pulling a half drunk bottle of Applejack from the top of her pack, she threw it over to him. She'd snagged it from Alessia's office when they had been drinking earlier, but she knew that she wouldn't mind her giving it to him.

"Call it a consolation prize. Just go easy on it while you're watching the feeds, ok. No good if you end up seeing two of anything that might come knocking."

"Well unless you have another couple of bottles in there for me, I'll be lucky to even take the edge off with that," he laughed. True enough, the man had hollow legs and cast iron stomach. She didn't know anyone alive down here who could match Brick drink for drink. Having tried on more than one occasion, she had spent the mornings after curled up naked in his bed in a foetal position, wishing that she had never seen a shot glass before in her life. No doubt she would try again at some point though, loosing wasn't an option. Not to mention Brick was a damn good fuck.

"On second thoughts, it's pretty cold out there." Dancing back, she teased him with the bottle at arms length. "Maybe I should take this with me to stay warm."

For a big guy, he could move damn fast when he was given the proper motivation. "Ok, ok. I'll save it 'till I'm done," he said, reaching out snatching it from her hand and out of sight. He may have been fast, but she was smarter. "Got any idea where you're headed yet? Someone can cover a lot of ground in a week if they're motivated. More if they're not on foot."

The reminder of how long Dagaz had been gone left her feeling like someone had hit her, an invisible hand print across the face and a punch of emotion to the heart left a sting only she could feel . "I'll start at the beginning, obviously, and see what I find I guess from there. Mom said he was out by Vüthor •Ilaz, so I'll head out there and work my way out."

Alessia chimed in dejectedly. "If he's dug himself in somewhere, it's probably frozen over by now. I wish I had more than this for you to go on, but you know a much as I do at this point. The rest is going to have to be a mixture of luck, guesswork, and your stubbornness."

Which meant they knew next to bloody nothing, but she kept her mouth shut. The lack of information available had wasn't her fault. Morginn could see from the look on the other woman's face that she felt equally as bad, and at the back of her mind she knew lashing out again wouldn't help the situation improve. Besides, that anger was being saved and bottled up for when she found her brother. The storm blowing outside was going to be nothing compared to the one that was going to be unleashed on him for making her have to go and find him.

"I'll check in at sunrise tomorrow," she said, checking her watch. "That should give me a little under twenty hours to get there, and I should make the site by then in the Ro•zir if the winds stay like this. If they pick up much more, it's going to make finding anything next to impossible anyway until they die down. Either way, I need to get going"

She slipped past Brick, who she couldn't have managed to fit both arms around if she had tried, and squeezed them around Alessia tightly. "I'll be fine Mom, we both will. I promise you. You can rip him a new one when we get back, and I'll never let him forget how I had to go and rescue his sorry arse for the rest of his life. Ok?"

Her voice was on the edge of cracking with keeping her emotions tempered in front of the pair of them. Can't let the troops see you cry after all. "He's going to hate us for that. He deserves it, but he's going to hate us."

"If it means he has to be alive for us to make it hell, then that's how I'm bringing him back. That's what sisters are for right. I'll find him." Hefting her pack onto her back, she made for the exit. "I promise."