To Catch Hypothermia (open)

[Ashley Shaw]

Ash was bored. Really, really, really bored. Sitting alone didn’t do anything to help you wake up at six in the morning. Hell, why was he even up this early? He usually stayed in bed till ten at minimum. Something was wrong with him. His eyes heavy and he was thinking of falling asleep again. That was, until, he had found himself packing a large towel and his dressing gown which he usually wore in the mornings. It was light blue, soft and fluffy as hell. He also found himself packing a track suit, something he did very rarely these days if not at all. Even if it was a lazy day he’d go around in jeans, but no shirt. He was also a little surprised when he made the decision to take hot coffee in a flask. True, he loved coffee. It had just struck him that he had something different in mind. He’d do something not crazy, just flat out dangerous.
The night before had been cold. Really cold. The water was probably frozen on the lake even, which was where he was headed. He would test the ice first, and then break it with rocks. If he could muster enough will power, he’d dive into the freezing water without any fear of catching hypothermia.

The lake was, of course, frozen solid. Ashley couldn’t be asked to undress, so, he just did the stupid thing and decided to ruin his clothes. He tested the ice, finding a weak spot near the edge of the pier. Going back to the shore, he picked up a couple of large rocks and smashed through the ice. For the morning, he was being exceptionally safe, shown as he fetched a long branch probably twice the length as his height, and guided it into the water. When it didn’t touch the bottom, he threw it away (it penetrated the ice, but only fell half way, and so was sticking out of the ice like a flag pole).
He threw his shoes and socks to one side before drying his brain of common sense and diving into the water with a rock in hand. He was hit by exceptionally cold water with such a force he was strained to keep any oxygen in his lungs, smashing against the ice with the rock and break through just a few meters from the original diving spot. He pulled himself out, shivering. He smiled. Before he could do it again, he heard someone. Whether it was running, walking or calling he couldn’t tell.

[Tamsin Craig]

*--outfit

When in a new place, explore.

That was the law of the outback. When Tamsin and her family went out to camp, they explored every inch of where they were at before settling down. Now that she was in Pilot Ridge, Tamsin didn’t feel settled. She had gone into every store in the downtown, paced every street, and had even wandered over a few rooftops that she could access. The locals had told her she should try out the lake- the ice was likely thick enough to walk on if she was careful, and it was said to be very pretty with all the snow.

Snow. Pretty. Ha. Tamsin kicked at the vile white stuff with her boot, wrinkling her nose at the sheer depth of it as she headed toward the lake. It was too early for her to be traipsing around, but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t used to the change in the Time Zones yet, and she had always been one of those weird children that got up horrendously early just because they wanted to and went to bed without a fuss because they were actually tired. As she headed toward the lake, the girl noticed a set of tracks in the snow- meaning she wouldn’t be the only one there. She paused in her trek to go examine the prints. There were no tracks running back and they kept going forward in a straight line toward the lake. They were made by a fairly large person in flat shoes. Probably a male. Adult, maybe? She snorted and, as a force of habit, turned and tracked herself into the woods, then went back in her own footprints until she got to his. She stepped carefully in the confines of the mystery person’s footprints until she got toward her destination, and then stopped. A branch was sticking out of the water. There was a pair of shoes and a pair of socks on the dock. Her eyebrows knitted together and she moved closer.

When a boy emerged from the water, Tamsin’s eyebrows shot up, her mouth opened, and she had a moment where all thought was wiped from her head. It was like a computer crashing- she literally had to reboot all coherent thought before doing anything. She wavered for a millisecond, then dashed toward the dock, tripping in the snow more than once as she jumped through the deep snow. “OI!” She screamed, possibly the first words she had said to anyone except Cobalt in the past month of her being in Hammel. She slid onto the dock and waved her arms at him, yelling at him in Martu before realizing she was most definitely NOT in Australia.

Because people in Australia would have much more sense than this, for one.

“You crazy?! Get outta there! Ya dill, you’re gonna cark it!” Usually, Tamsin attempted to keep Australian slang out of her conversations, but this was an exception, by a longshot. No way was the going to worry about how she was talking when there was a good chance this guy was gonna freeze his ass off. “Come on, get out!” She wasn’t sure what she was going to do if he refused, which why she was yelling so assertively. Her mother had always said the best thing about Tamsin was her ability to get a point across.

Who knew it would serve her so well?

[Ashley Shaw]

Ashley looked over his shoulder and sighed. Another one who didn’t understand just how much he could endure. Then again, he hadn’t done crazy shit like this in a long time, so he was starting to question whether or not this was a good idea. He rolled his eyes and threw his gaze to the source of the shouting, which started off as some kind of foreign language, but soon transformed into English so he could understand what she was saying. She spoke in slang that he couldn’t understand, while flailing about. That made the experience a lot more hilarious for him. It was a funny picture. He didn’t think that was right to think tough, she was younger than him -or so it looked- and she seemed to have a good intent. Or she just saw him as a moron and wasn’t allowing one to die on her timetable. He smiled. That’s a good enough excuse. He was an idiot through and through.

“Excuse me?” Ash said, managing to find some footing on the ice, standing up and straightening out, “don’t worry about me, I know when I’m about to keel over and die.”
Ash smiled. In all honesty, he didn’t know when to stop anything like this. It was something he got ‘addicted’ to. Depression made him do random shit, and sometimes even suppressed it, but not for long. He was a daredevil by heart. He wouldn’t quit because she told him to.
He studied her and smiled. He’d never seen someone with that complexion before. Dark skin wasn’t a common sight at Hammel, and he was rather pleased on seeing someone who did. It was racially settling to know that metas weren’t all Western or East Asian. It was all he’d seen so far.

[Tamsin Craig]

Tamsin leaned her weight onto one leg and stood with her hands on her hips as the male climbed out of the ice. She took her time to survey him and the dock once more, hoping for an explanation for all this weirdness. There was a bag that she hadn’t noticed before, but she didn’t know what was inside, and so she still had absolutely no idea what his reasoning was for diving into the frigid water like that. Perhaps he had lost something- that would make the most sense. She would never comprehend the idea of doing something like this for fun, fun was running, jumping, and climbing trees, not killing yourself in cold water. She tested the ice with her boot and it cracked, so she frowned and stayed on the planks instead.

“Doubt it. Tha’s some chillin’ water there.” The aborigine girl muttered, wrinkling her nose at it. She looked up to him expectantly and motioned for him to start moving over to where she was. “If you expecting me to drag you back, think ‘gain.” She didn’t know what to do in this kind of situation- she couldn’t introduce herself, and when he smiled at her she started to think that he was a bit crazy. That was even more of a reason to get him back to wherever he was from- her probably had a mother that was worried about him and father ready to whip his butt for worrying them.

She had never dealt with freezing water, but she was smart, and she suspected that his clothes being wet was not good. Wet things in the cold air froze. That was a fact. “D’you have clothes in here?” She asked, nudging his bag with her foot carefully. She didn’t want to kick it onto the ice or anything- that would be a problem. “What’chu thinkin’ anyway? Stupid, stupid.” She muttered to herself, gesturing again for him to come in from where he was standing, smiling like a moron. Maybe she would have to go out on the ice and drag him back. There was so way she could just walk away from this- that would be like murder, and she had enough of that- murdering, that is.

A chilling wind blew in out of nowhere at the thought, and she forced it to stop- it was a cold wind and that would freeze him up good at the rate it was going. She didn't need to add her powers into the problem.