The storm had come out of nowhere.
A warm front from the valley slammed into a wall of mountain cold, and by dusk Libby looked dipped in glass. Branches bowed under clear ice, eaves glittered like sugar, and every gust turned the town into a windchime. By midnight the radio sputtered, the east line sagged, and one of the new relay poles folded like a paper straw. When morning laid a pale blue over the hills, the damage was honest and everywhere.
Gabriel stood at the station window with a dented mug in both hands, squinting through the rime. “That explains why the forecast cut off at ‘chance of—’ and then sounded like a drowning kazoo.”
Thane tugged on his jacket, claws careful with the zipper. “Mark’s got the truck warming. We fix what we can before the next freeze glues it all in place.”
Holt’s tail thumped the wall with a hollow thud. “Fix lines! Good day for work.”
Rime tilted his head, eyes tracking a skating sheet of ice sliding off the roof. “Lines thin. Break easy.”
“Exactly why you are not allowed to yank on anything,” Gabriel said, pointing at him. “Especially anything that hums, buzzes, or looks important.”
Rime blinked. “Not yank. Pull careful.”
“That’s what you said last time,” Gabriel muttered. “You nearly turned the antenna into a javelin.”
The truck groaned up the forest road with chains clinking, tires chewing packed snow. Mark drove, jaw tucked into his collar; Thane rode shotgun. Holt, Rime, and Gabriel braced in the bed with rope slings, breath streaming like smoke. The trees glittered with ice, every twig crusted, trunks wearing clear sleeves of winter. When they rounded the cut above the east ridge, the problem waved hello: a relay pole listing hard at forty-five degrees, feed drooping into the drift like dead tinsel. One guy wire lay snapped and curled in the snow.
Mark climbed down, kicked at the frozen anchor, and hissed. “Plate bolts sheared. We’ll have to reset the footing and tie new guys.”
“I hold pole,” Holt announced proudly.
“No,” Thane and Gabriel said in the same breath.
“Why not? Strong.”
“Because we want it upright,” Gabriel said, “not in the next county.”
Holt frowned, insulted and earnest at once. “I gentle now.”
Rime crouched by the base, tapping the anchor with a claw. “Ground frozen. Need dig.”
“Right,” Thane said. “Holt, with me—start a hole. Rime, help Mark on the bolts. Gabriel, you’re on the box. And if it sparks, do not lick it.”
Gabriel shouldered the ladder, deadpan. “There goes my whole plan.”
Fifteen minutes later, the frozen ground had become a crater. Holt dug like an avalanche with opinions. Snow and dirt clods flew in heroic arcs. Mark dove aside as a chunk the size of a watermelon sailed past his head.
“Hey!” Mark yelped. “Hole. Not quarry.”
Holt leaned on his shovel, satisfied. “Hole big enough for two poles. In case first gets lonely.”
“Great,” Gabriel said from halfway up the ladder. “We can marry them in the spring.”
Thane pinched the bridge of his nose. “Next time, smaller hole.”
Rime, still quiet at the anchor, grunted. “Told him. He dig like bear.”
“I am bear-size,” Holt replied, offended and pleased in equal measure.
They worked the chaos into order. Mark wrestled fresh plates into the trench. Thane slid a shoulder under the leaning pole and lifted with that controlled, unmoving strength the town had learned to trust. Holt stepped in to steady, and the ground trembled every time he reset his feet. Rime threaded new guy wire through his claws like rope through a pulley, movements neat and deliberate. Gabriel popped the frozen face off the relay box with a screwdriver and started swearing like a sailor in love with his ship.
“Coupling line,” he called, not looking.
Thane tossed the coil up without shifting the weight of the pole. Gabriel snatched it one-handed, tail flicking. “Nice throw, quarterback.”
Ice cracked in a long, clear run up the pines. The pole came true. Guys sang faintly with tension. Gabriel snugged the coupling and breathed on his fingers. “Okay, give me a test.” He twisted the dial. A crackle answered down the line, a shy little pop, then silence that felt too final.
“Tell me that wasn’t our splice,” he said.
Rime lifted his muzzle. The faintest thread of smoke tugged skyward from the next ridge. He pointed. “There.”
“Oh, come on,” Mark groaned.
They slogged upslope through knee-deep powder, breaking the crust with a squeak every step. The second relay looked punched. Ice had overloaded the span; a snapped strand had kissed the mast and cooked the ground lead to charcoal. The access hinge had seized under a rind of clear ice.
Gabriel wedged his screwdriver under the seam and levered. “Frozen solid.”
“Let me,” Rime said. He set his claws precisely, pressed in, and the metal gave with a crisp crack that sounded like a knuckle popping the size of a door.
Gabriel stared. “You could do that the whole time?”
“Was waiting,” Rime said. “Looked fun for you.”
Holt barked a laugh so big it scared three crows off a branch. “Rime funny now.”
“This is how the world ends,” Gabriel said. “Rime develops a sense of humor.”
Mark peered at the burnt wire and grimaced. “Ground lead’s toast. We’ll cut it back to clean and crimp a new eye.”
“I fix,” Holt announced, and reached for the blackened cable.
“Holt, wait—” Thane started.
The cable kissed his paw with leftover bite. Holt yelped. Every hair on his forearm stood out, making him look like a shocked dandelion.
For two beats no one moved. Then Gabriel bent double, howling laughter into his sleeve. “You—” he wheezed, trying to breathe, “—you just tased yourself to prove you’re helpful.”
Holt blinked at his paw, smoke wisping. “Felt tingly.”
“Congratulations,” Mark said, equal parts relieved and amused. “You’re grounded. Literally grounded.”
Rime shook his head with solemn pity. “Alpha’s headache.”
Thane exhaled, the kind of breath that keeps a chuckle out by force. “You’re chopping firewood for a week.”
“Worth it,” Holt said, extremely proud. “Now cable dead. Safe.”
“By the power of Holt,” Gabriel whispered, wiping tears. “Patron saint of short circuits.”
They replaced the lead and reseated the clamps, careful of hidden ice. Sun edged through ragged cloud and turned the ridge to glitter. Back at the box, Gabriel tuned the relay, tongue peeking at the corner of his mouth in concentration.
“Beacon’s back,” he said. “We should be good—” He paused, listening. “Okay, we are good. One more check at the river bend and I’ll play a victory song so sweet you’ll think you’re on hold with a nice dentist.”
“That is not incentive,” Mark said.
They dropped to the old logging road that snaked toward the river. The bank there kept its own climate: colder, slicker, the air with a knife’s edge. The last relay clung to a post near the water’s curve, half-lacquered in hoarfrost. The access box had frozen shut; the hinges looked encased, like a bug in amber.
“Frozen solid,” Gabriel said, frowning.
Rime stepped up again. He set both hands, felt for the stress line, and snapped the hinge with a little twist. The door swung open as if the cold had been a rumor.
Gabriel stared at him a second time. “You’re just—okay. We’re going to have a chat about your secret toolbox later.”
“Paws,” Rime said simply, and set about separating spaghetti into neat, obedient lines.
Thane checked the span while Mark hammered an anchor wedge back into snug, working carefully around ice that wanted to shatter into treacherous confetti. Holt, chastened by electricity and stern looks, carried tools like sacred objects and set them down with exaggerated delicacy.
“Careful,” Mark said as Holt’s elbow brushed the mast. The pole shivered a fraction. Holt froze in a statue of innocence, eyes wide, hand hovering.
“Pole lean first,” he said.
“You lean first,” Rime murmured.
“Do not.”
“Do.”
“Children,” Gabriel said under his breath, smiling.
By late afternoon the last connection seated with a satisfying click. Sunlight reached through thinning cloud, caught ice, and scattered it like powdered glass. They tested the line; it sang. They listened for pops and got none. The forest made its winter quiet again.
On the trudge back to the truck, Holt looped a leftover coil of wire around his neck like a scarf. “Good look?”
“Very runway,” Gabriel said. “Winter, by Clumsy Feral.”
“Better than city coat,” Holt said. “Too tight.”
Marta’s voice crackled over the handheld clipped to Thane’s belt. “How’s my favorite chaos team?”
“All fixed,” Thane said. “Power clean. Relays good. Holt discovered electricity.”
A pause. “Do I want details?”
“No,” Gabriel called. “File under ‘things that worked out.’”
Dusk had just pushed the sky from pewter to deep blue when they rolled back into town. The square glowed with lanterns. Kids chased each other around the bakery steps; the air smelled like stew and bread and woodsmoke. From the station, a clean signal spilled into the street.
Gabriel sprinted inside, hands flying over the board, and stuck his head back out. “Signal’s rock solid. We are officially a radio station again.”
Mark patted the rack like a loyal dog. “That’s my girl.”
Outside, Holt and Rime stacked tools in a neat pyramid, trading a low, pleased rumble—the wolf equivalent of applause. Thane brushed frost off his sleeves and listened. The little outdoor speaker by the door carried the sound of a familiar voice from a night that felt a lifetime away:
“To anyone listening… we are still here.”
The words hung in the cold a second. Holt’s tail thumped. “Still here,” he echoed, grinning. “Still loud.”
“The best kind of still,” Gabriel said, clapping him on the shoulder.
“Good sound,” Rime added, aiming his face at the sky like he could taste it.
“The best kind,” Thane agreed.
People drifted to the bonfire as night settled. Mark brought a pot that smelled like pepper and beef; Marta arrived with bread; someone scrounged an old speaker and coaxed quiet rock through it from the newly repaired line. Laughter rose and fell. The signal held.
Holt sprawled near the flames, steam rising from his fur. “I like fixing lines,” he said around a mouthful of bread. “Fun.”
“You got shocked, fell in a hole, and almost knocked a pole over,” Gabriel said, ladling stew into bowls.
“Still fun.”
Rime cupped tea with both hands. The mug looked comically small in his claws. “Holt like anything with breaking.”
“True,” Thane said. “But he is learning to break the right things.”
That got a circle of chuckles, the tired, satisfied kind that come after good work. For a while they ate in companionable quiet, listening to the song drift over the square. Stars pricked through the haze. Snow whispered down from overloaded limbs in slow releases, soft and steady as breath.
When the pot scraped empty and the fire sank to coals, Holt stretched and nodded toward the ridge. The relay’s tiny red marker blinked through the branches like a patient heart.
“Look,” he said, voice softer. “Still shining.”
Thane followed his gaze. “Yeah,” he said. “Still shining.”
Gabriel raised his dented mug in a mock toast. “To Holt, the world’s first electrically-charged wolf.”
Rime added, with the faintest hint of pride, “To Alpha. Pole not fall this time.”
Mark lifted his cup. “To Libby—miracles and wire and dumb luck.”
Holt’s grin spread like sunrise. “And strong claws.”
Warm laughter rolled out and up, mingling with the steady hum in the wires above them. The repaired line stamped its faint rhythm on the night, a pulse connecting cabin to cabin, den to den, all the small stubborn lives stitched under the winter sky. It sounded like survival. It sounded like home.
Later, when the crowd thinned and the speaker ran to static, Thane stood a moment alone by the station door. The cold nipped clean at his nose; the square shone with hoof and boot and pad prints frozen into a temporary map of a day that had gone right. Behind him, Gabriel hummed under his breath, tidying dials. Down the street, Holt and Rime lumbered toward the cabin with a coil of spare cable between them, arguing in low voices about which one of them had the better “gentle.”
“Not yank,” Rime insisted.
“Gentle,” Holt replied solemnly, and then tripped over his own spare cable and caught himself with both hands like a gymnast sticking a landing. He glanced around. No one saw—except Thane, who chose not to smile until Holt had disappeared into the dark.
The Alpha turned his face to the ridge one more time, watched the little red blink wink and return, steady as a heartbeat. He let a breath out and felt the world give one back. Still here. Still loud. And for tonight, blessedly ordinary.