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They did not talk about the arcane: how the tree was intelligent and communicative. They did not talk about the insane: the plane crash. Those things were beyond the workings of tired brains, which were withdrawing from the higher processes into survival processes. They talked about the mundane: how that little snow squall had wet their clothing, how they might arrange themselves for sleeping, how they might actually sleep in spite of hunger and thirst. Plans? There were no plans.

When the firelight began to wane, and the men began to drift to sleep, the teenagers shifted into Japanese. Their heads were close together, so they spoke in low tones in order to not disturb them.

“I say we go off on our own,” said Jason. “We’re just as fit as they are.”

“Yes,” said Abe, “but they have special survival training, and a way to make fire.”

“Haven’t you ever watched survivalist TV? I have,” said Jason.

“I’ve played some survivalist video games,” Umezawa chimed in. “I’m sure Minecraft is a lot like a mountaintop in wilderness America. Just punch a tree.”

The spruce tree cavern grew cold for a moment.

“Fine, just punch the ground, but you’ve got to be able to make an ax and a shovel soon enough.”

“Right,” said Abe, “and then extract some iron into a stone furnace to form a metal ax.”

“Would you two be serious?” said Jason. “Besides, how do we know to trust them?”

“Say, that’s right,” said Abe. “Just before the crash, I heard them talking about being a government test or something like that.”

“Really?” said Jason and Umezawa together.

“Yes, really,” Abe said. He closed his eyes against the glowing cinders to remember exactly what they had said. “Blake said to Lars, ‘If this turbulence continues, then the government will be able to test whether our training is worthwhile.’”

“Wow,” said Jason. “The government shot down a commercial airliner? I thought that happened only in Korea.”

“And how is it,” Umezawa said, now fascinated with the subject, “how is it that we were all put to sleep? That has to do with all of us surviving.”

“And without a scratch!” said Abe.

“Without a scratch,” Jason repeated, rubbing his forehead. “Being put to sleep by what? That gas fume, I should think. I wonder what it was.”

“Spent jet fuel, right?” Abe said.

“Well, you’ve heard of koun’na, right? Chemtrails?” Umezawa was feeling his oats, now. “Maybe the government was shooting down the airliner because the airliner was poisoning the population with koun’na.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, really,” said Jason. “It’s not stupid, though. But think about it: a crashed airliner is going to make the news, and no matter how you cover it up, you’ve just killed a bunch of people, and no conspiracy is going to survive that many inquiries. As for me, I’m still stalled on how we survived.”

“Maybe it was because it relaxed us or something,” said Abe.

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“Hm…” Sano said.

“And why just us six?” Jason continued. “The four of us have no interest in anything government or conspiracy or international. It’s all very strange. I think that gas was for those two, because they’re agency plants, and we just got a spray of it because were near the vent on their side. Instead of collateral damage, we’re collateral salvage.”

“Well, who cares about all that?” said Sano. “I just don’t trust them because they’re foreigners.”

At that, the two men took their turn to explode into laughter.

In halting Japanese, Lars said, “Did you hear that, Blake? We’re foreigners, way out here in Idaho!”

The teens’ eyes grew wide in the waning light. In English, they said, “You speak Japanese?!?”

“Of course we do!” said Lars. “Almost all Americans our age speak Japanese! We’ve been inculcated with your culture. Aw, shucks, you just don’t know, do you, you poor little spring chicks? We’ve been watching anime since we were sitting on our mama’s couches, sucking on Cap’n Crunch cereal.”

“Anime?”

“Sure,” Blake said, his face set firm in serious recollection. “First there was Voltron, I think.”

“That’s not anime.”

“Then there was Thundercats, and Centurion…”

“Those aren’t anime!”

“G.I. Joe,” said Lars.

Abe could stand no more insults to his high culture. With a roar, he rose from his place and leaped upon Blake, swinging his fists wildly, which Blake fended off as a wolf mother might fend off her own pup: play. Abe shouted, “Voltron was a poor adaptation of the super robot anime Beast King Go-Lion which was dubbed into English and heavily edited into pure garbage and force-fed into your generation’s mushy brains!”

Lars was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe, much less help Blake contain the flailing Abe.

“Hey, wait a second,” said Jason. “Abe is right. How could you learn Japanese from English dubs?”

“Maybe they lip read,” Umezawa said, which sent Lars into even deeper hysterics.

“Call off your dog,” said Lars, when he finally caught his breath. “He’s gonna get himself hurt. We’ll explain.”

A flush and sweaty Abe glared at the two foreigners, and he said, getting control of himself, “Thundercats and Centurion, maybe, at the very furthest reaches of a wide and vast anime universe, but G.I. Joe? Never!” And he got mad all over again.

Lars doubled over. “Now we know,” he said. “If I ain’t a horny toad; now I know.”

“Seriously,” said Jason, holding Abe with a calming arm. “How do you know Japanese?”

“It’s a coincidence, really,” said Lars. “Blake, here, and I didn’t know each other from Fumio Kishida until a few years ago.”

“That’s right,” said Blake.

“In fact, I didn’t even know he was on this particular flight.”

“I remember now,” said Abe. “You came back from the front of the cabin and asked to trade seats with someone to sit next to Blake.”

“You see, Blake and I met each other in Japan a few years ago. His daughter and my son both serve in the Marines over there.”

“Well, in Okinawa.”

“Right, in Okinawa prefect, but still, his daughter ended up marrying a Japanese fellow from Kyoto or some such, on the same day my son married a Japanese vixen from outside Osaka. Real pretty girl, too. I don’t know nothing about that Japanese boy your girl married, but I can say I’m real proud of my boy and the girl he ended up marrying. Real smart cookie. Reads in all sorts of different talking languages, you know. Loves old Hollywood movies. Anyhow, as they were both military weddings, and as they were both on the same day, Blake and me, well, our paths crossed, and got to liking each other, so we struck up a royal friendship.”

“None of that answers my question,” said Jason, his eyes narrowing into the very definition of suspicion.

“What’s that?” said Lars.

“How did you learn Japanese?”

“Oh! Well, boy howdy, don’t you know it,” Lars exclaimed. “Lookit: that girl of his—my boy’s, I mean—well, she was reading in all those other talking languages, and I wanted to be able to say nice things to her in Japanese, so as to encourage her and the boy to make grandbabies for me and the missus, that I made her get me started, and she taught me a tongue twister.”

“Demonstrate.”

Lars’s smile evaporated. “Demonstrate?”

“Prove it.”

Lars looked at Blake. Blake shifted uncomfortably and avoided eye contact. Lars took a breath, and in unison, they recited it as little schoolboys would: “Torawo torunara torawo toru yori toriwo tore, toriwa otorini torawo tore.”

Sano’s jaw dropped open. “Huh?” she said.

Jason refused to give them the satisfaction of his utmost surprise. “Well, okay then,” he said. “That’s satisfactory.”

Lars switched back to Japanese, and said, very haltingly. “I can understand it okay, see? But…it takes…time…is that the correct time? It takes time to formulate a sandwich.”

“A sandwich?” Sano twittered.

“Did I say sandwich?” Lars said, blushing so hard that his face glowed red in the dim light.

Blake said in equally halting Japanese, “Verb terminations are quite difficult, but.”

“But what?”

“But what what?”

“You said, in Japanese, ‘but,’ and then you didn’t say anything to follow up.”

Blake puzzled over it, mouthing the syllables without speaking. Eventually he gave up and said, “I think I just meant to say, ‘in the rear,’”

The party roared with laughter. Blake refused to smile, but he nodded satisfaction at delivering the perfect joke.

“Still,” Jason said, “that’s a pretty good rendition of that old tongue twister. Your pronunciation was very good, even if it was deliberate and slow.”

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“It reminds me of an old Husker Du song,” Blake said.

“Huh?”

“Not an anime,” Blake said. He almost smiled.

“I’m thirsty,” said Umezawa.

“We all are,” said Blake. “Hunger and thirst will wake us in the morning, but we’ll be warm, so we can think instead of speculating. Good night.”

With that, he rolled over and fell promptly to sleep.

They all followed suit, but even though each thought he and she slept fitful sleeps, they did not hear a growl and sniff. They did not hear a disagreement between wind and mountain, that old married couple of opposition to life and well-being to any on the high wilderness slopes. They did not hear unmistakable bootsteps.

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