“DAD!” Lauren cried at the sight of her sister’s car careening over the snow-capped side of the highway and down the hill just ahead of them. The words were trapped in her throat as she grappled violently with the prospect that she might’ve lost her sister and her fiancé in one fell swoop. “They… t-they-”
“These fucking brakes,” Ross growled desperately as he wrestled with his vehicle’s controls.
“Dad, the tr-” Millie peeped, pointing with a trembling hand in the direction of the sliding semi as it hit the same patch of black ice and rolled right into the incoming lanes, its harsh headlights blasting through the crystalline air.
Teetering on its wheels, the truck was now rolling laterally and on the verge of tipping over, directly onto a row of cars that would be compressed like soda cans beneath its rapidly overshadowing black trailer and spray of sparks. Vehicles screeched to a halt, but there was nowhere to go without heading for oncoming traffic, as the lanes forward were completely blocked.
Silent prayers were sent up along with cries of accursed luck, all lost amidst the insanity. The ground rumbled and sent snow upward in flaky spires, as though an earthquake had ripped through the center of the highway, though the panic had risen too high for anyone to take notice at first.
A brown leather boot nearly as long as the truck itself burst through the miasmic snow flurries and slammed into the road between the out-of-control behemoth and the doomed motorists, followed by a tanned leg as thick as a pillar, sculpted with calf muscles obviously capable of kicking the truck off into the invisible distance like a playground ball if its owner so chose. The black trailer collided with the monumental footwear in an ugly squelch of metal as it screeched to an instant halt, the wheels that had gone airborne slamming back down to the ground. Several smaller collisions resulted in the ensuing commotion due to the ice in the increasingly thick traffic, though the truck remained leaning against the ankle of the giantess.
The Omega’s tremendous frame, appearing as a silhouette high above and outlined by the dimmed winter sun, seemed to hover over all for a few moments like a guardian angel before lowering toward the chaos with hands outstretched. Her long red hair whipped about in the cutting breeze.
Though they’d avoided being crunched under the trailer, Ross’s steering wheel was already turned as far as it would go, and the Meyers’ van was sailing across the lanes and toward the gulch on the opposite side. Just before the front wheels could splash through the wall of packed snow, though, shadow fell over the hood.
A gargantuan left hand soared downward, seemingly from the heavens, as the storm made it difficult to make out precise features above the towering being’s waist, with fingers curled as it descended rapidly on the van. The peachy palm scooped into the side, darkening the windows as it clasped, and clenched beneath the vehicle’s metal belly, lifting it from the road before it had a chance to slide over the hill.
An enormous pair of narrowed emerald eyes filled up the windshield as they stared inside to inspect for injury, before softening in their gaze. The fiery tresses continuing billowing in the white rush at the staggering altitude.
“Is everyone all right in there?” a lilting voice bellowed through the cold roar of the mounting storm. The proximity revealed their goddess-like savior was young: probably no more than nineteen, with long eyelashes and soft dimples at the corners of her mouth. Still in shock, the three Meyers nodded in mechanical unison, before Lauren became self-aware again, slamming her hands on the dashboard and waving her arms to get the Omega’s attention.
The descent down the ice-coated slope in Britney’s car had been heart-haltingly fast, and the impact on the frozen ravine below didn’t make for a gentle ending either. Abrasively cold air was already rushing inside due to the shattered window, and was compounded with the crash of the ice as the front of the car collided with the surface and burrowed into the treacherous waters below.
Ian surprised himself to realize he was not, in fact, a pile of person-shaped pulp once impact had been made. He’d certainly braced himself for it as Britney’s palm positioned him such that the brunt of the blow was absorbed into her skin, and though he was fairly sure he at least had whiplash, the mere act of not only breathing but having motor skills still intact was a veritable miracle.
Of course, as Ian awkwardly clambered upward out of the protective cage of Britney’s limp fingers and over the edge of the cup holder with his one usable arm, he realized celebrations should be put on hold, as the car had already slid far enough into the ravine that water was trickling into the smashed window. Craning his neck in all directions for some indication of a possible solution, the Beta looked up and realized his captor was apparently unconscious, with a small shard of the window glass embedded in her neck.
“Britney. Britney, c’mon, wake up,” Ian barked as loudly as he could to be heard above the now-rushing waterfall making its way into the vehicle. With his free arm, he punched meekly into the woman’s knuckles. “WAKE UP!”
Climbing much higher was mostly out of the question with his broken arm, though he knew it wouldn’t make much difference once enough of the ravine had seeped into the car to claim it for the icy depths. Ian scooped up a small piece of glass that had landed on the seat and began prodding incessantly at Britney’s hand with it, hoping to startle her awake, though this wasn’t having the desired effect either, even when her skin was scratched.
“BRITNEY! WORK WITH ME!” Ian shouted at the top of his lungs as he scurried toward the dashboard, looking for something - anything - that could be used to help. Nothing within reach was remotely useful, but before the Beta could even find time to be upset about this, he glanced back out the window to see the distant tree line shifting more into view as the car inched further downward, and he knew his time to explore options had run out. With heartbeats to spare, Ian threw himself back into the cup holder beneath the arch of Britney’s fingers.
A slip of the wheels on uneven terrain caused the silver vehicle to lurch forward far enough that it no longer had any traction, and with a sickening crunch of ice, it plunged fully into the water toward the basin below.
Ice water crashed by the gallon into the car, which was already beginning to turn on its side, and though it seemed like it was too late to truly make any difference, Ian found himself relieved to feel Britney’s fingers curling back around him again as she gasped back into consciousness.
“What the fuck…” she grunted groggily, before yelping with pain at the shard wedged in her neck. Her hands were trembling, but she kept steady enough as she lifted Ian out of the cup holder again and struggled to clamber into the back, as the water had already filled in up to the level of the front seats.
In a matter of seconds, what was previously the gray December sky outside the windows was replaced by the crushing aquamarine void of the deepest section of the ravine.
“Are you okay?” Ian demanded, barely thinking about it, and earned a look of surprise from Britney as she wrestled her way atop the seats to hold off on being submerged in ice water as long as possible, though she was quickly running out of seconds as the car continued twisting and turning on its descent, until it struck the basin with a hard smack that nearly jolted the pair back to the windshield.
“Y-Yeah…” she mumbled. Her hand wrapped more completely around the Beta’s body, providing additional warmth from her last reserves of it. “You?”
“Fine. How strong a swimmer are you?” Ian said. He could feel the tremors running violently through Britney’s fingers as the water rose up to the level of her thighs, with no other place to climb in the small car to avoid it. She hesitated, then took a deep inhale.
“You’re not g-gonna be able to… m-make it, being in the w-water that long,” she reported gravely through chattering teeth. “The… top’s already f-frozen again. Even if I… t-take us right b-back to the top, and even if I can b-break through that layer, you’ll be an ice c-cube before it h-happens.”
“Your mouth,” Ian said, again hardly thinking about it as the frigid depths reached Britney’s abdomen. “What about if I…”
Despite the mania of the situation and her rapidly devolving body temperature, Britney found it within herself to furrow her brow in shock and stare gape-mouthed at the Beta. “My m-mo… you’d seriously trust m-me t-to-”
“Yes I would,” he interrupted. “Now what are you waiting for?”
With a single nod of her head, Britney scooped her new charge into her palm and cupped him to her open mouth, depositing him atop her tongue and sealing her lips behind him as she left the remaining air pocket with one last gulp to kick off into the icy waters.
Jostled against her cheeks and along her molars, Ian struggled to hang onto something in the muggy environment. At one point, he felt himself sliding toward her gullet, but her swollen tongue quickly bucked upward and buoyed him closer to the roof of her mouth, where she pinned him before any more slippery locomotion could occur. Given the three-inch height of her passenger, Britney was barely able to close her lips all the way, but it did make it easier to keep track of him.
Fighting her way back through the pressure of the continually flowing ravine water, the athletic Alpha began kicking her way up toward the glistening opaque surface. The ovular point of impact where the car had entered the ravine was still visible, but had indeed frozen over already with a thin sheet of ice. Her limbs were already beyond numb, and by the time Britney reached the surface, throwing her limp fists at the hardened layer, it felt as useful as trying to melt the ice with a harsh glare.
Ian wasn’t fairing terribly well, either. As the Alpha put her remaining strength into breaking through their gelid underwater prison, she had less attention to devote to keeping the Beta from being tossed about. Wrestling with the base of Britney’s tongue, Ian fought to keep himself near the front of her lips, but every thrust of her neck and every automatic siphoning of air down into the throat pulled him further away. With every surface in the uneven blackness coated with saliva, there was nothing to keep him from continually rolling back and forth toward possible doom.
Low on oxygen and rapidly losing cognition, Britney’s eyelids began to flutter, though through some subconscious sense of duty, she kept her lips completely shut, her tongue blocking Ian from slipping past her uvula once again. The last sight she could coherently make out was the phosphorescent green visage of the ice being overtaken by a shadow: an oblong shape that extended with five trunk-like appendages and descended toward her. In her air-deprived brain, for a moment, it crossed Britney’s mind that it was the reaper come to claim them.
The Omega’s hand smashed through the ice like it was peanut brittle and scooped Britney’s unconscious form between surprisingly delicate fingertips. Chunks of sleet and water sloshed from the Alpha’s body as she was brought to rest in the center of the massive hand, her body heat steadily trying to regulate as a row of fingers was laid atop her torso, without pressing down in order to allow air back in.
Sputtering back to the land of the living, then, Britney turned her head to the side and spat Ian’s weathered and spit-drenched but nevertheless fully alive self onto the titanic pad of palm flesh before he could be accidentally swallowed.
The weary Beta blinked at the sudden reintroduction to light, already colder than ever at being back in the open, stormy air, and squinted with confusion at the intricate spiral skin cell patterns in the terrain of the Omega’s hand before managing to the put the pieces together when he turned around to drink in the looming sight of a face too large to comprehend its very existence. Despite their godlike scale, the features were soft and filled with genuine concern that helped his sprinting heart rate to settle down.
“Thank you,” Ian breathed quietly in the Alpha’s direction, fairly certain that his words would be lost amidst the wind.
“N-No. Thank you,” Britney coughed weakly. “Ian.”