sometimes close to his body, sometimes lightly, but never throws them up in the air playfully. And when he puts them down it's never harshly, and it's never too far away from his feet. He doesn't have to see them, it's the comfort of their presence that makes the gap a little bit smaller, but it doesn't alter its hollowness.

Pete's piece of iceberg is drifting, he still has time to jump off, with his flippers under his right wing, and make it back to the land with the never ending ice. But if he wanted to join the rest he would have moved when he first heard the ice cracking. Then, all he would have had to do was turn around and walk a few steps forward, or not even turn around, but just trod a few steps backwards. But he didn't want to then, and he doesn't want to now.

The flippers. Pete has had the flippers for some time now. Shortly after Pete had stopped thinking, and wanting to know, and shortly after he could no longer comfort himself with warm thoughts, and shortly after the world around him began to feel colder, and cooler, he wandered one day, and he found them. They were there, right there, in front of him, on the icy ground. It was behind a little hill of ice. Some penguins might have already discovered them before him, but they must not have wanted them, for they had their own feet to swim with, but Pete looked at them, and when he looked at them he saw them. He didn't wonder where they might have come from, whether they have been thrown off a ship, or off an expedition plane for a joke - they were just there. He did wonder at them, but not about them.
There might have been other things near by, but he didn't look.
At first the green of their colour made his eyes open, but soon they came back to their size, and then he saw that they would be bigger than his feet, and he knew that if he ever put them on and tried to swim that they would fall off very quickly, and so his face dropped a little bit, but it soon came back to its size. But then he just looked, and the more he looked the more his looking turned into seeing, and he kept on looking, until they became his. Once they became his he picked them up and they were under his right wing. At first they were only under his right wing, but then after a while they would be under his left wing for a little while, just so that they wouldn't be only under the right wing, and once the left wing was happy he would take them to the right wing, because the right wing was firmer and a little bit stronger.