Leyna frowned, but more out of helpless powerlessness than out of displeasure:
"Is he being reckless again? Where are you guys?"
"Ahem, Leyna, I have to go. The plane is arriving… I will pick up Alex… Talk to you later."
Leyna's lips twitched. How many times had that trick been used before? She hurriedly shouted:
"Make sure to take care of him!!"
*Beep*
Leyna exhaled, and looked at the screen of her phone. At least, she managed some words before the call ended, even though she could not be certain they went through. She shook her head, then put the phone away. After taking a deep breath, she regained her professional composure, and stepped forward to catch up to her superior already inside the mansion.
_ _ _
_ _ _
Alex was like a bird of prey, with gravity his ally, pulling him toward his prey. His snowboard, white with dark accents, remained perpendicular to his torso, its front pointing at the ground and its rear at the sky to lessen the drag. As he lost altitude, he moved his arms away from his body to make them look like the stabilizing wings of an arrow. The ground kept coming closer and closer, while the air passing by his body almost gave him the illusion that he only had to clench his gloved hands to take a hold of it.
A glint flashed through his eyes behind the goggles, as his heartbeat picked up. The ground stopped being a picturesque scenery of black and white, and started looking real, like something he could turn into a meat paste against upon impact with.
He held his breath, and triggered his parachute. Buffeted by the wind, he was pulled back, but his focus didn't waver. His heart beat with a mix of excitement, nervousness, and adrenaline that brought out the sharpness wrapped under his reckless appearance.
He pulled the parachute downward to keep falling at high speed. As his snowboard was about to make contact with the white snow, he triggered the release mechanism of the parachute, and freeing himself from the drag, he bent his knees to soften the shock of his landing.
Beneath his mask, his grin turned untamed, as all the kinetic energy from his fall was transformed into pure acceleration that pushed his frictionless board to the speed of a sports car on a race track.
The world was suddenly just a white road that was of freedom, and nothing else. No unhappiness, no frustration, no worry, no complicated family.
It was just a slide straight down the end of the slope with no air-jump, no tricks, but it was thrilling carving his tracks on the powdery ground and raising showers of snow with the edges of his board every time he swerved, changed his posture, and touched the white road. If not for the need to control his breathing, Alex would have been laughing out loud, freely and brightly.
At that moment, the small plane he had jumped down from passed overhead. It had finished turning and it flew low enough that its belly could be seen cleary with the naked eyes, just as Alex had asked. But in its wake, it had left something behind, something small, but enough to start a fall of dominos.
At the peak behind Alex, a small part of the snow was dislodged by the vibration from the noisy passage of the plane. It wobbled, before falling off, and making a bigger portion of the shaken snow lose a support that now proved critical.
The snow collapsed, and rolled down the peak, pulling more and more companions along the way, and turning into a white wave, an avalanche.
*Brrrr*
It was like thunder in a clear sky. One moment there was absolute calm, and the next, the world itself seemed to shake, to tremor even though the thunder sounded distant.
Alex felt the slight vibration beneath him despite his high speed. He didn't look back, but his eyes flashed. His expression didn't change. He only bent low, moving his weight toward the front of his board. He didn't show fear. His eyes lit up with a fire stoked by the challenge from nature.
Him or the wave of snow, which one would arrive at the end of the slope first? His grin under his mask, without any deliberate control, turned feral, putting a reckless wildness on full display. And behind him, the avalanche was only going wilder, more feral, flattening everything in its path as it galloped downward.
Above in the sky, Mark expression changed when he saw what was happening below. He didn't have Alex's big heart, nor his broad mind. He only felt like his own heart was about to be squeezed into oblivion by the fear and the anxiety as he waved wildly:
"Move up! Move up! And keep an eye on him! Don't lose him! You hear me!? Don't lose sight of him!!!"
The plane rose in altitude to prevent its noise from worsening the situation below as everyone focused on the black dot below. It was small, like all humans in the face of nature, but at the same time, just with its fearless heart, it looked the avalanche's equal, nature's might's equal.
Unfortunately, Alex was losing the race, even though he was enjoying it. The unstoppable avalanche was relentlessly eating at the distance between them. He narrowed his eyes behind the goggles, and suddenly went along a curve on the slope to swerve to the right, finally managing to see from the corner of his eye the unleashed beast behind him.
The curve ended at a cliff, and he flew off it, climbing up high. Finally, he could laugh out loud, and he did so as he looked back while upside down, his arms spread wide, as he looked at the part of the avalanche that followed him to the cliff.
"HAHAHAHA…"
Mark gritted his teeth as he heard the reverberating echoes of the wild laughter below, and he slapped the wall of the cabin almost in equal parts in frustration as in distress. He really wanted to go down to pick Alex up and crack open his skull to see what was inside.
Still, he roared in the next moment:
"ALEX!!! CAREFUL!!!"
The snow flew off the cliff, and slammed into the welcoming arms spread wide as if waiting for it. Mark's mouth remained open as his heart dropped down slowly, very slowly, as the snow hit the ground below, burying Alex, along with everything that had been swept into the wave along the way.