"How, though?" Trashscarf asked of himself, and perhaps of Fluffy the mustache. "I can't just close off a whole valley, not even on the Fractal Coastline."

"Well, once I quit holdin' it back, the ivy's gonna do that for ya," Fluffy grumbled. "As a mycellium network, I kin reroute nutrients and suchlike, by tappin' into the roots of plants. I kept things balanced, best I could, but the ivy's the only thing that can handle the murk. I kin feed off it, and talk to it, sure, but it don't gotta listen, and it ain't."

"So you're kind of like a druid," Trashscarf mused, stroking the mustache thoughtfully. He'd never had a mustache of his own before, and he'd always assumed that thoughtful stroking was one of the main perks. Fluffy didn't seem to mind. "A little fuzzy druid."

"I guess ya could say that," Fluffy allowed.

"So... you can talk to plants-- can you predict the weather and that sort of thing?"

"Howcome yer askin'?"

"Because if the murk's in the fog, where's the fog coming from? Like, which direction? Windspeed, humidity, all that stuff-- can you tell?"

"Hmmphpphhp..." Fluffy fluttered on Trashscarf's lip a moment. "Not from here," it admitted. "Maybe if we got up higher somewheres."

"Higher it is," Trashscarf said firmly. "We're not going to abandon your valley. We're going to fix it."

"Gosh." Fluffy seemed quite overcome with gratitude or something, the usual response when Trashscarf decided to Help.

Stick in hand, tromping through the ivy and stirring up clouds of mosquitoes, Trashscarf followed the ghosts of streets between the shells of buildings covered in piles of ivy, their empty windows looming like the sockets of an overgrown skull.

"So what was this place?" he asked Fluffy. "There were people here!"

"I never bothered ta wonder when it was all happenin'," Fluffy replied, "I don't, y'see, when I'm all spread out proper. Sometimes they'd manage to get hold of me fer a bit; they was curious types. I'd tell 'em about the fundamental interconnectedness of all things, an' that sorta stuff, and they'd make mustaches out of me, like this, and wear 'em around, but I couldn't talk to 'em like I'm talkin' to you."

"What kind of people were they? Humans?"

"Mammals of some kind." Fluffy made Trashscarf's upper lip flap in a dismissive splutter. "Different from you, but you're still kinda familiar."

"That's me," Trashscarf said modestly. "I blend in wherever I go, but people who know me recognize me."

"That a Waywalker thing?"

"Well, I was an urban druid before I was a Waywalker," Trashscarf grunted, as he hauled himself up another ivy-clad obstacle and tumbled down the other side. The ivy tore away a bit, and revealed old concrete and rebar beneath. Trashscarf rested his hand on the rusty remains a moment, sadly. "There's some overlap."

"Is that right? How so?"

"An urban druid looks after their city the way a dirt-digging tree-talking backwoods type of druid looks after their forest," Trashscarf explained, pushing aside some more ivy to reveal a switchback track threading up the valley into the fog-shrouded hills that glinted with the autumn colors. He followed it with long strides, the ivy reluctantly rustling back around him. "I lost my city, so I took up the Way, and the roads are kind of like a city of their own; they're both made by people, used by people."

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

"How do you lose a whole city?" Fluffy inquired.

"Like this!" Trashscarf snapped, waving around at the ruins around him. "I don't want to talk about it!"

"You sure? You seem to like talkin' about yerself, an' I'm just tryin' to keep you chipper so you don't get all murkified again."

"I'm quite willing to play Drop-The-Exposition with you," Trashscarf said, stomping onwards and upwards. "It's certainly better than talking to myself-- what kind of broody bastard does that? But not about my past. Not that far past, anyway. Besides, I can't really remember." He scratched the mustache pensively; it didn't seem to mind this, either.

"So what's with the scarf?"

"What scarf?"

"Dude," Fluffy said, managing to pronounce the word correctly in the accent of the Fractal Coast, so that it was more than just a word, more a sort of all-purpose conversational roundabout, currently leaning towards weary sarcasm.

"Oh, -my- scarf. It's..." Trashscarf, who'd been rolling a few flakes of rust from the rebar into a new strand of fibers, glanced down at it. "It's sort of a journal, I suppose?"

"So you've probably got some hella magic powers or somethin' to help us?"

"It depends," Trashscarf said cautiously. "I can do a lot to help travelers, and we are, indeed, traveling. So I can find the easiest routes, I can pitch a pleasant campsite, I can repair things, scrounge for food--"

"Can ya fight?"

"I avoid it," Trashscarf said firmly. "I believe in non-violence, especially in terms of it happening to me."

"And how's that workin' for ya?"

"Well, if I was sensible enough to carry a sword or even a decent dagger, I'd have shaved you off down to my bicuspids by now, so I'd say it's working well for both of us, hmm?"

"Fair enough," Fluffy replied affably.

"I've run out of road," Trashscarf reported, as he crested the hill, and the ruins of what might once have been a castle crumbled in ivy-heaps around him, like someone had raked all the autumn leaves into huge piles, although jumping into them would be painful rather than fun. He scrambled up them until he was perched precariously on the pinnacle, and could look down into the vast sweep of the valley through which they'd come.

It was entirely full of fog, so it was about as interesting as looking into a plate. He sighed. "Can you work out where the fog's coming from?"

Fluffy fluttered in the faint breeze, sending out thinner tendrils that seemed too fine to see, sampling the scents. Through the smells of smoke Fluffy'd been pumping up his nose, Trashscarf caught a hint of petrichor and ozone. "Ain't sure," the mustache admitted after a moment.

"Well, we know it's not coming from the ocean, or it'd have been on the Via Litoralis," Trashscarf reasoned. "So that's all of West. It's not coming from the North, or I'd have seen signs of it in Barking. That leaves us with South or East."

He rubbed his chin, appreciating the smooth skin there. "South will probably take us out of this pocket, but into another one-- the Fractal Coastline's like that, and we could spend years trying to untangle all the little curlicues. So-- East!" Trashscarf pointed dramatically into the rising sun.

And now that he could see more clearly, he saw it-- the fog was being spun out of mingling air, on the crest of the dark ragged hills above the valley, and rolling down like a slow avalanche.

"I'll take yer word for it," Fluffy said, "I can't actually see, y'see."

"There's no road going that way," Trashscarf said slowly.

"So make one."

"It's not that easy," Trashscarf sighed. "There are Waywalkers who bravely blaze, and those of us who just refresh and repair. Guess which I am."

"Gee, I wonder."

"But! I do have a trick!" Trashscarf hopped and scrambled back down to the last place he'd felt the road beneath his boots.

"A trick?"

"The Stick Trick," Trashscarf said dramatically, kicking the ivy and dirt aside until his boot cleared a small patch of faded asphalt, with a cracked catseye still inset.

He lifted the walking stick and spun it around his head a few times dramatically, accidentally flipped it off into the ivy, and had to go get it and come back to the cleared patch, huffing.

"You was sayin'?"

"The Stick Trick, an ancient Waywalker ritual which I certainly didn't just invent right now. Behold!"

A final careful flourish, and Trashscarf pounded the butt of the stick onto the ancient road surface, once, twice, a third time-- and could almost swear he felt a tingle through the wood.

"Is this some magic?"

"Better," Trashscarf said with a grin. "This... is Chaos."

He let go of the stick.