Disclaimer: due South belongs to the Pauls and Alliance Atlantis. I'm just playing.

Notes: This was for ds_snippets for the prompt teamwork. Writing something short-short was actually easier than I was expecting. Sort of. Much kudos to nos4a2no9 who provided sterling hand-holding and beta work, and also agreed with me that-- despite being incorrect-- the last line was kind of pretty.

Feed(back) etcetera-cat.

Tear a blank page out of the weather journal and crumple it up into a little ball. Stamp on it a few times, throw it around, treat it rough. Then pick at it and unfold it and try and smooth it back to flat.

The contours and angles, degrees of shade and grey on the otherwise unrelieved and unrelieving white—that’s the best description of the Northwest Areas that Ray’s been able to come up with.

Maybe he’s spent too much time around Fraser (there’s probably an Inuit tale about throwing away paper) or maybe he’s going crackers because of the cold (various other bits of him are staging mutiny, why should his brain cells be any different?), but Ray thinks that he’s finally getting the hang of this near-Arctic thing.

The most important thing is to remember that you’re nothing but a tiny spot of ink on a vast, vast page. That’s why sticking together with your team is so important, it’s why each and every member tries their hardest to keep everyone together. Little speckles, banded together, making a noticeable blot.

Knots and ropes made of words and sounds—an Inuit tale; the dogs barking at the moon; the hypnotic crunching glide of the sled across the snow—that’s the most important thing up here. That and the people that you use those intangible ropes to tie yourself to.