Why Are We Still Here?
With pillows piled up behind them, the cover pulled up to their necks and the window wide open, Ingunn and Vladis lay half-reclined and staring at the opposite wall of their hotel room. The light of morning had just finished creeping across the painting of the northern lights that hung there.
"It's not that good a painting, really," said Vladis. "I mean, not of the lights. They're all covered up by the clouds. Why do that?"
Ingunn kissed Vladis on the top of her closely cropped head and pulled her closer, although they were already snuggled quite tightly. "Because," she said, "it doesn't give you what you want. It's evocative. You don't just go wow. You say why? And that keeps you looking. I think it's a brilliant composition, really. The dark clouds are quite smashing. Like you."
"Okay, but stop being silly. We said that we wanted to go somewhere warm for the rest of our honeymoon. We are not still here just to stare at a painting."

Ingunn continued to stare. "Listen," she said. "Can't you hear it?"
"Hear what?"
"What's going on in the glacier. No, not with those ears. With your original ones. The ones from before."
"We can do that?"
Ingunn responded by tickling Vladis. She knew just where to do it, right under her arms where the hair ended. When she had her laughing uncontrollably, she stopped suddenly and seized her mate's face between both hands.
"Now!" she said, "before you think another thought! Now listen!"
Then it came, the slow grind of ice against ice, of so much ice she could feel as well as hear it. In her bones she could feel it. A grinding, a creaking, a cracking, a rumbling. So loud it made Vladis cry out and clap her hands to her ears. Which didn't mute the sound a bit.
"Because that's our homeland," said Ingunn. "That's why you can't shut it out. That's our homeland melting, distintegrating, dying. That's why we're still here. And that's why I was staring. I could hear the call."
"Okay. Now that we've both heard it, I'm more ready than ever to go somewhere else. Somewhere with warm waves lapping on a white sand beach. And with a bar that's right there on the beach."
"We can't do that. Not yet. First we answer the call."
"We what? But there's nothing we can do about it."
"If you heard that your mother was dying, what would you do before anything else?"
"I'd go see her. But we're already here."
"No, we have to go further. We have to go right to the heart. I want us to go to the cave."
"The cave in the glacier?"
"Of course."
"But what if we can't get back out?"
"As humans we can get back out."
"But you're not acting like a human."
"Then let me act like one now."
When they were done making love, and in the shower together, Ingunn said, with Vladis behind her skin to skin and shampooing her long golden hair, "There, that's done. Now let's go, one last time, and be goddesses."
9 December 2022
Texas Jim
Vík, Iceland
www.granitecoast.ca