All that remained were embers. Snow gathered at the edges of the campfire, winning the war of attrition. Come mid-day, there’d be no sign of its existence. The closest stars provided little warmth, forced to cast their feeble rays through a rolling grey cloud front. Gusting winds would return to play their discordant howl across the sheer ice-sheet, but, for now, the world had stilled. It was far enough across the pass to be alone. Few native fauna traveled this far into the sheets, and those that did would make their presence known.
That is what it had learned elsewhere, but the fire told a different story. There was an intelligent creature out in this region. It had done a cursory survey of the other climates and had found flora and fauna, but it had not found any creatures capable of tool making or complex language. This region, the harshest this celestial body had to offer on its surface, was not expected to hold much in the way of biodiversity, let alone of the type it sought. The fire had been constructed, and its creator was likely nearby.
No tracks. It produced a sigil pad, placing the scene in the device’s memory. It was too soon for prints to be lost to the snow. Unless the creature had taken steps to conceal its movements, it surmised that the animal moved below or above the ice. It pulled forth a long blue rod and placed it on the ground’s surface. It lifted the top up with its right-most appendage and dropped it. A soft thunk reverberated from the rod. It focused its senses and repeated the process.
Its suspicions were confirmed. A hole had been formed in the ice, only recently frozen back into place. It could see the shape of it in its mind’s eye, round and jagged. It had been cut with a crude tool or carved with an appendage the animal possessed. The hole next to the fire, across from where it stood.
An oddity. The creature could survive in the extreme temperatures below, yet it lit a fire on the surface. Perhaps the fire was for food and not warmth, as there was no shelter nearby. In its experience, fire building and the need for warmth coincided. Animals that adapted to extreme temperatures tended to be capable of eating regional wildlife and plants without the need to neutralize parasites with heat.
The animal’s scent path would be more difficult for it to follow underwater. It could survive the environment below the surface, but it preferred land. It continued. Individuals of a species tended to reside in localities. There was a chance that this was a lone traveler like itself, but probabilities indicated that to be unlikely.
Boredom did not come easy to it, but come it did. The search had not yielded results for many of the planet’s long day and night cycles. It found no more remnants or any indication of where the animal might have surfaced. The temperature continued to plummet, reaching nearly as low as the atmosphere makeup would allow without gasses condensing.
More cycles passed. Its trek was repetitious. It would travel a short distance, check the surroundings with its resonance rod, and repeat. It let its mind busy itself with other equations and topographical mapping. It would soon reach its rest threshold, and it would need to return to its station to do so.
The rod came down again, and its mind was brought back into focus. The device had malfunctioned. It conducted the test again, and the same error presented itself. It focused on the resonance, and it confirmed the reading. It concluded that the tool could not be malfunctioning.
There were hundreds of holes forming around it. None were below it directly. The creatures seemed resistant to its measurements, as it could make out no outlines beneath the holes. Whatever was forming them could not be perceived with its sonic equipment.
A great many creatures were going to surface, intelligent enough to surround it without it knowing. Something akin to excitement buzzed in its mind, eager to greet this new, unique life.
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