[ IP ] Black Ice

Moonbeams skipped off the ice like pebbles on a still pond, scattering dots of pale light into the air all around me. Standing at the edge of the black expanse, I could feel the wind tugging at my clothes, as if warning me not to proceed. I ignored it, searching ahead through the smooth, featureless terrain that seemed to extend endlessly before me. My throat was raw from calling her name and from breathing the chill air but I called yet again. 
 
 `` Irene! Answer me, please!'' 
 
 Once again there was no response but for my own voice echoing off the black ice, and I knew I had no choice. The prints in the snow that I had been tracking stopped here at the edge of the lake, and there was no trail leading back, leaving me with no option but to brave the ice and hope to find her on the other side. I glared down at the ice, wondering if I would ever see her again, and the ice glared back, an unfeeling void. 
 I pulled my hood tighter around my face, bracing against the icy wind, and stepped onto the ice. Each step was taken with care, one foot in front of the other, eyes constantly scanning for any fissure or flaw that could spell my doom. Once again I called her name, and once again I was answered only by the ice. I could feel it mocking me, 
 mocking my fear, my desperation. 
 
 One foot in front of the other, not a single misstep, hours upon hours of careful stepping and watching and calling without a response and still the shore evaded my sight. The ice laughed at me, I could hear it deep inside, but I forged on, determined to find her. The black ice held beneath my feet if only by sheer willpower, or perhaps it wished to watch, to see how far a desperate man would go. 
 
 The moon had nearly faded from the sky when the far shore finally came to my desperate eyes, and like a madman I shouted in glee. Surely, Surely the shore would hold a trail, a trail that I could follow to her, to my Irene. I increased my pace, care going to the ever grasping wind as I raced for the shore, though my carelessness would not be my undoing. No, my undoing came from the mocking black ice, when before me I saw it: a hole in the ice and no footprints on the shore, and there, beneath the icy water and pale as the moonbeams skipping like pebbles on the laughing black ice, lay my beautiful, lovely Irene.
