Nolan looked toward the distant cabin, its roof barely visible against the snow. The solitude was one of the reasons he kept returning to this place. Out here, the world seemed simple: the cold, the ice and the patient wait for a catch.
Then the ice shifted beneath Nolan’s boots. He dismissed it as a natural movement until a second, heavier thump made him freeze. Something was approaching through the wavering gloom. A hulking white shape emerged in the distance, and his stomach tightened. A polar bear.