Torin Gray, sorely a boy, drags himself on the tired main road of his birthplace, The Hosman Slums. His stomach sits in pain while mist cradles the streets around in dusk, freeing shreds of sun solely under spring. He walks for a meal inlay of waste, the tides of fish, or kindness within hands of strangers. To Torin, his splintered legs feel silent amid words damp in his mind, “A boy’s path in this world is in step with the blood of hunger and loss, far from the petty warmth alike a mother’s touch.” 

He wanders through ditches of liars, hands from the pier, and traders from strange seas. The boy seems breathless to the gusts of passing souls, as he searches for hope far from grace, alone in tremors of fog. Moments come when he begs, until his steps lead him to the slum’s corner of waste. As whether a meal is rancid with dew or abandoned by dogs means little. Whether it is poisoned or spit on is lost in taste. Whether it was once warm in a home or birthed in a pipe is thoughtless. The boy is simply crying for food. 

In time, he sees strays tread from one of the many hills of litter, luring him closer, as where dogs roam scraps tend to be. Inside the hill lies a cavity he crouches into. Deep within, forgotten cubs cuddle bread and rotten fruit. He takes what's needed, roaming atop another hill to eat, wary of those who steal. 

After settling his hunger into welts of strain, the dark of the day edges into the black mist of the  night. Now, all he must do is let his father fall asleep. All he must do is stall for peace, to eventually close his eyes. He limps to Fog’s Pier, the spine of Hosman, anchoring cuts of trade, harvest, and travel. Without it, the slums would collapse. For Torin, he waits here when he must be alone.

Miles bring him to a deck silent to the rest and so he sits, staring into the clouded sea. He thinks of broken glass, salt, and a bruise running across his side. He has lived with the Hosman fog shrouding his horizons and so he sees no dreams, idly sitting, awaiting his wake. He hears the sounds of pier hands then a clamor of metal pile near him. He turns to see an old man poise some feet close, adjusting a fishing rod. The man appears distraught, smiling with decaying teeth and purely covered by weaves of rags. He wears a bulbous hat stitched with emblems and arrays of colored cloth. After observing him, Torin continues to wait.

The man begins to fish and within some casts laughs,

“Thehr int nothin to feesh! On liteh tweezes n clums!”

His feet rise in amusement and Torin turns to look, the old man notices and curiously asks,

“Boyah! Lukin at my top! Its fishy! Its ben scarfing fish tence river bears slept!”

Torin misunderstanding, looks closely at his hat and says,

“I never knew that.”

The boy's response impassioned the fisherman to explain the meaning of the emblems, technique, and how some Pier hands disrespect him. Eventually, the fishermen’s words interest Torin,

“Seh boya, haf any sises?”

Torin nods his head no,

“I have a father.”

“Oh yeh we had got sum at sumtime…but haf ye seen any sises here in the fog pass the light?”

Torin thinks and remembers how the roads seem quieter than usual. 

“You're right. Where have they gone?”

The fisherman grunts,

“Deh King stall em! Fool! Deh Fog ill be blunt to nothin wit no grace if he stalls all of em!”

Torin remembers. He's seen the slums dwindle, losing people to an unknown cause. A sliver of worry has him question Hosman’s fate. Without regard, the fisherman breezes into the Pier’s history. Torin stares into fog until the man leaves, the mist turns cold, and lights guide him away from darkness. He walks south to his home, seeing shadows cower in cold around small lanterns. After hours, the boy borders his home. It is weathered, patched with scaffolding, and broken. 

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Torin stands in night, shrouded by mist, far from sleep amidst the cold. He knows all he must do is let his father rest in a home from fog. He knows he has eaten, all he must do is fall asleep.

He takes steps and raises his ear to the door. 

Nothing.

He curls his hand onto the wet brass knob. He listens to an open crack.

Nothing.

He glares into the openness to see fallen debris.

Nothing.

His father lay only in scratches on the wall. Torin thinks he’s to sleep for another day, so he begins limping to his room until he hears mutters from another room. His limp becomes rigid, his neck siezes, and his thoughts fixate onto sounds so unfamiliar. He waits for something more but is given nothing. The silence carries him away from sleep, it carries him to somewhere deeper into the home.

Sitting on a rotting chair is him, his father, staring through a wall amid starved darkness. Torin hasn’t seen him awake for months, he is worried.  

“If she was here…If she was just here…holding me in her arms…gliding her fingers through my hair…her warm touch to ward off the mist”

His ill father mutters, wet with isolation, distant from sleep. 

He turns to his son. His eyes are gray, a pupil is faint. A fog rests in them. Torin stares, still with tears, 

“You're a hound Torin. A dog living in blood…but nothing to a boy. ”

His words form for Torin’s heart, his father looks for pain. Gasps of air break his father into rage.

“You are no child! You are no child at all! You will never be a man! You are not my son boy!”

The wailing man cries at the wall he sees nothing through, defiling his fingers into it. His nails turn to splinters, his blood to water. He turns to Torin and laments under a knife of moonlight. A mist alive from lonely terrors and nightmares of a man who cannot sleep drifts. He breathes it into a frenzy, lunging at Torin pinning him to the ground,

“I am no god Torin! I am only a Father.”

His father moves senselessly, tearing and striking. Torin can’t move, he tries to breathe to think. He’s slowly losing thought. He hears his father’s cries until he falls asleep. In time he wakes up, with a lifeless father on the ground, a scrap of rotten wood buried into his throat.

===

A small lifetime has passed, Torin lives close to the age of his late father, in a home far from his death. He has lived through fog some may never find their way through. He lives among hills that bathe in Sun, grow fruits, and bridge families into one. He has cried, laughed, and been hurt in these Hills. Pain lives and dies here, along with gardens of smiles. The village of Hillsmany, has welcomed Torin into the embrace of Nature’s Dance. 

He stands now amidst a home on fire, the home of a woman he once loved while she lays lifeless on the ground. Her daughter, Pell, has fled. He is surrounded by men who wish to take. 

He kneels down cradling Rymi into his arms. He is filled with memories of his only love and their unfortunate heartbreak, along with the love of the family they’ve found here in Hillsmany. He cries and aches while a league of men encircle him with bloodied weapons. He looks around himself. He rests Rymi’s head onto the ground, remembering what he must do. 

He remembers that Pell still lives, far from Hosman. He remembers that Hillsmany needs him to fight. 

He sheds his final tears, raising his Ax and Shield. 

Memories flow into him. He sees the old man who saved his life, the old man probably burning with his family in the House of Bayroon. He sees his Captain, who probably stands in his final moments, defending children before they’re enslaved, fighting with his golden aura scoured in blood. He sees a boy named Siphon, a child who lives with the wills of Sora and Irelia, running with an arrow in his leg, truly grieving for the first time. He sees Pell, the flower of Persephone, a child entrusted with the hopes of her mother, to live free against the chains of Thallium, the city of gold. A child with no blood of his own, likely seeing the last of her family fall under the grace of starlight and fire. 

A flood of tears fall from his eyes.

He stares into the eyes of tens of men while a mist of red visible to all their eyes flourishes from his Ax, fusing with it into a blade of crimson. His Shield breathes in the same mist, grafting into it a living emblem in the form of a Wolf’s head. He screams with the spirit of a wild beast quaking the floor and men around him, thinking with his heart one final time,

“If I can shout at death to give you all a life I have never lived, then I will spread lives off the blade of my ax, and become the dog I know none of you will ever see. All I hope is you live with the starving grief that may come, as I no longer will be there to protect you. I hope this is what I must do, to die for love underneath the sun, far from fog.”

The man Torin Gray lunges at the hearts of the men, cleaving as many as he will. He will die here to the avail of two children who will run into the wild, far from Hillsmany. They will survive, remembering the village of family who helped them flee. Together they will live for one another, learning what it means to smile and cry. 

Together, they will learn Nature’s Dance.