The silvery crown of the Siberian tundra: a ragged fringe of fiords and land-tongues half-amalgamated into the arctic ocean.
A Russian naval outpost perches by the foot of Imitr Peak. Deserted. Windows here have shattered like sheets of ice, and snow has swaddled the place in a heavy blanket. Crumpled playing cards, an orthodox icon framed in flaking gold, and other forgotten keepsakes lie scattered in and among the banks of white. The snow is dotted with the glint of outdated ammunition cartridges. There are bullet holes in the walls.
White tigers stalk the taiga: coniferous forests made swollen and tumorous with snowfall. The cats’ padded paws make no sound above the howl of the wind. They pounce seemingly out of nowhere. No tracks can be found. Men go mad staring into the white without sleep.
Great peaks jut painfully from the snow and ice. Many a tunnel and cavern has been dug into their sides, whether by wind or tool or claw. None still bear any sign of habitation, but some reach surprisingly far into the rock - too far for safe exploration, regrettably. There, traces of long-eroded wall carvings can still be made out: broken petroglyphs, with loose ends that offer up too many shapes to the eye. The deeper indentations are stained a dark indigo, a pigment like that of squid ink. Cephalopod ink, however, is not commonly known to shine in the dark.
Blizzards and hailstorms tear across the desolation without warning. However, by all accounts their frequency appears set, purposeful almost. It’s as if a great maw is slowly but surely grinding and gnawing, chewing the peninsula into white, just blinding white.
Innokentiy Peninsula, Siberia, Russia
Artography - Maps of places not real - Vol. 01
