To the outside world, it was a place of pure, unbearable loneliness. Pristine, unadulterated solitude. Helen never found it easy to tear her gaze from the majestic, forbidding mountains that acted as more than just physical barriers to civilisation. 'Ladies of the Ice' she had termed them in a moment of poetic reflection. The rare sound of a dog's barking and the shout of another human being broke through her reverie. The supplies for another six months. It had been a long time since she had last spoken with another person, but she was almost irritated by this necessary intrusion into her privacy. She grudgingly stood up from her desk and opening the door onto the snow covered outside, walked to meet the visitors.

"And good day to you, Mrs Santa. How's the night life up here on the North Pole?" the burly head of the supplies team jokingly enquired.

"Mountains, as much as they lack brains, don't ask bothersome questions," replied Helen icily. With that she tossed the man the keys to the storage room and walked back to her living quarters.

"Touchy, aren't we? As cold as Snow White's Queen, me thinks. You need a real man to melt your heart!" spoke another man, a lewd tone to his voice. Helen turned, her eyes pin points fixed on his face.

"Just remember, the last man that annoyed me is dead," and with that she slammed the door shut.

The man who had spoken took a moment to recover, then joined the others to shift the cargo into the room. Helen allowed a small smile to cross her face. That 'last' man had been her father and he had died naturally, but her threat was unmistakable. The bitterness had not gone after five long years spent at the Pole. She had left her stuck-up family, her 'future', to finally grasp what she had dreamed of all her life. A place near to untainted. The chance of pioneering. Her family's name and connections had made the grant from research organisations an easy goal. The research papers and samples she regularly sent back to society kept the paper-pushers happy; and she continued. The previous weeks had been different, in a way she was incapable of describing to herself, let alone to others. The door opened, the chief supplier said tersely, "Please sign here, Miss." He looked at her wonderingly as she located a pen and scribbled on the form. Although not dishevelled, her appearance seemed devoid of outward vitality. The slightly frazzled hair, gaunt eyes and grey-like lips, seemed signs of someone who had become a shadow of her former self. Hollow. "You must get lonely here at times. I've got a daughter about your age and God knows, she can't be without company for more than a few minutes before she'll claim utter boredom. I mean, it's not as if you can have a good chat with your own shadow?" The man flashed Helen a fatherly smile and was startled to see it returned with a look of shock and suspicion. He quickly snatched the paper back and curtly bit off a "Thanks, look after yourself," before leaving with the supplies crew. Helen sat, a frown frozen on her features.

"Stop being paranoid," she told herself, "you've never hinted at anything like that. He was only making a friendly observation...and you alienated him immediately." He had mentioned shadows though. A shadow. As darkness fell over the cold little world, separate from all other continents, Helen looked wonderingly out of the window and pondered, was the near-complete isolation causing her to slowly go...insane?

She woke with a renewed sense of determination. She would confront this....this enigma. That was her job as an explorer, as an adventurer. To discover, research and catalogue. She knew that it had been much more than a need for adventure that had brought her here. It had been the attraction of a home, where she would only answer to herself, where the closeness of others could never exist to hurt her again. Well, now she was alone and with a definite aim, to find out the truth about the figure she had seen. She armed herself with the most durable climbing gear, taking care to ensure she would not be missing something crucial when trying to survive near deadly crevices and treacherous landscape. 'Standing on the shoulders of giants, I feel cold' a lyric from an old rock song came back to her. How right it seemed here, among ice giants.

She was standing in a very precarious position when the silhouette, the familiar shadow-like apparition, made its appearance far away and yet so close. Physically it was distant, its shape indeterminate from where she stood. It drew her, however, and she knew that she had to get closer. On her other forays into the ice, the shadow had always followed, watching, never attempting to approach her, but increasing her curiosity and her fear.

"Wait, whoever you are. I am coming!" she shouted at the silhouette, a tremor in her voice. The shadow did not change and she thought it may not have heard, or perhaps it simply could not comprehend. She curled her hand like a megaphone and shouted once more. From so far away, she felt the object of her attention examine her, concentrate on her. Her excitement was now growing. "It may be a wholly different species, something no one has come across before." Her fear was not replaced, but it mingled with a new sense of premonition. This could be her big break.

She laboured slowly but steadily, consciously preventing herself from moving faster. The ice was the enemy of speed, she reminded herself. Time passed. She realised that behind that mountain peak was the object of weeks' constant thoughts. Perhaps undiscovered life. She moved as silently as possible. 'The shadow may be just as afraid', she wondered. She came around the last turn, her heart pounding so hard she could literally hear it. She stopped in her tracks.

It could not be. It was absurd, impossible. She was hallucinating, that was it. Her self-imposed exile had affected her mind. Her own face observed her with tender amusement, her own hand was offered to her. She slowly backed away, trembling, her world shaken to the core. The 'shadow', a semi-solid replica of herself, stood where she had waited, making no movements towards her.

'What are you? Are you something inside my mind, is this my imagination playing havoc?' she screamed more to herself than to the being. The shadow only smiled. Helen looked at the creature more carefully. Yes, it perfectly resembled her, but the 'clothes' it wore seemed different, although definitely familiar. It was dress she had worn at her father's funeral. Defiant of everyone's wishes, she had been the only one clad in red, in a crowd of black. All the grief of those years, the traumas, the frustration came back to her. The futility of what she had called her mission of exploration became starkly clear. She was worthless to the world, merely hiding. The shadow started walking away. Helen followed. She would take this to the end. Her copy broke into an easy run, almost hovering over the slippery and merciless surface. Helen threw all caution to the wind and followed at the same speed.

She felt herself falling, plunging into icy depths. It seemed almost in slow motion, as if something was slowing down the last moments of her life, allowing her to reflect and repent perhaps?

To the outside world, it was a place of pure, unbearable loneliness. Pristine, unadulterated.