Fog-et about it

With a heavy sigh he pulled his eyes away from the idyllic village and began to walk on. At least the forest didn’t pretend to be accommodating and he would rather go out in a blaze of glory than a slow lingering death from so called 'hospitality.

The world shifted abruptly, manufactured beauty to, nature, unopposed, in all its glory. Brambles sprawled unkempt, some rising several metres high, adorned with thorns larger than a hand.

Not a patch of the forest wasn’t consumed. Blood red vines crept over the trees, slowly suffocating them. Not even the bark was safe from natures’ voracious hunger. Kato shuddered. What a way to go, wrapped in vines as you just stood there waiting, unable to move, losing more and more of yourself with each passing year. Until eventually the sun was a distant memory and you died. He almost felt sorry for the trees.

After a while the landscape morphed into a more familiar setting, a low grass hill, bathed in the low orange hues of early evening. As Kato crested the gradient, the trees gave way to a clearing, swathed in a dark grass. He half expected to see the monster but of course he did not. It was silent. Eerily so.

Something was wrong. The birds had stopped trilling and the low background rustling in the undergrowth was gone.

“Whoosh,” he could hear the wind, but something was wrong, the familiar chill of the breeze was absent. The grass didn’t move, and the trees stayed still.

“Whoosh” Kato ran chasing the sound, his curiosity getting the better of him, but no matter the distance he covered the volume stayed the same, a low murmuring that pushed him forward. “Whoosh” it mocked him, a faint whisper on the edge of his senses.

A faint dark brown patch of grass stopped his maddened pursuit. There were a couple of clumps of white fur resting on the patch, and the metallic scent of blood lingered in the air. ‘Is this where the poker landed?’ Kato looked at the ground shocked, he had tried to push its reckless charge out of his mind, but with this all the memories came flooding back.

Him saying they should go, it just shaking its head, ‘huh’ he thought with a humourless chuckle. ‘Maybe we didn’t actually have that many meaningful moments after all.’ Kato knelt beside the patch, a silent apology forming on his lips “rest in peace” he murmured softly, circling his chest in a gesture of respect. “May Cogul watch over you.”

The body hadn’t even been left, presumably nature had consumed that too, it was insatiable, callous in its pursuit for nutrients, and not even societal norms would prevent it from achieving its goals. Kato was envious.

“Woosh” the noise was sudden, louder, and more insistent than it had been before, as if upset Kato hadn’t been paying attention to it. “Ok that’s not creepy not at all” Kato pushed down the sudden unease, ‘not following that again’ he thought resolved.

It tried again and again. Each call more demanding than the last, but Kato stayed firm, in mere moments it had risen from the gentle murmurings of a summer breeze to the howling gales of a winter storm. And yet still the trees refused to sway, not a single leaf trembling in the phantom hurricane.

Kato began to back off, ‘what was wrong with this place?’ He scrambled backwards, aiming to retrace his steps, after all he hadn’t chosen this direction for any particular reason.

Suddenly the noises stopped, the false wind apparently giving up.

Kato breathed a sigh of relief, he had had enough strangeness to last him a lifetime, ‘thank Cogul for small miracles’ he thought as he continued to walk away.

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“Fwoosh” a new sound broke the silence, a dull hissing that refused to abate. Katos’ eyes scanned the clearing, fog had begun to flow over the ridge ringing the clearing. Tendrils of thick white crawling their way across the sodden ground. Kato backed up retreating towards the middle of clearing, but the fog didn’t stop. Tendril after tendril pushed over the ledge before combining into a thick fog bank that advanced towards him slowly. It wouldn’t be long now; the strange weather was incessant and would swallow him just as surely as it had everything else.

Kato held his knife out of him and waved it menacingly. The fog did not care. ‘Right, good going me, what’s next punching the rain.’ Kato thought sardonically, but his grip grew no less tight.

A moment later he was swallowed, the fog enveloping him as a light pressure settled on him, as if he was walking through webbing. He stayed there for a moment, on edge, the hissing stopped, and a maniacal cackling replaced it. A heavy ball formed in his gut; something was playing with him.

Indiscriminate shadows drifted in and out of his vision, dark shapes shifting and writhing in the unnatural whiteness, sometimes vaguely humanoid and at others resembled creatures born of a monsters’ nightmares.

The laughter got louder, seeming to come from all directions, it was taunting him, Kato could feel it in his gut. He wouldn’t be a part of this, Kato began to run, it wasn’t a panicked sprint, he knew that would be pointless in the dense fog. It was a slow measured pace; his steps deliberate and cautious. His limited field of vision forcing a measured response.

The further he got the worse it was, the fog seemed to get thicker and thicker, his field of vision retracted and with it his pace slowed.

The laughter had stopped some time ago, and in a way that was worse now all Kato heard was the general sounds of the forest, each rustle and trill, eliciting strong responses, his body jerking unnaturally whenever a perfectly benign sound cut through the silence.

A thin layer of moisture coated him, clammy to the touch, the remnants of his tattered garbs clinging to his skin. His hair kept blocking his vision; ‘I really need a trim’ Kato thought morosely, as he pushed a dark lock from his vision for the hundredth time. The thought a stunning contrast to the absurdity he had found himself in.

As Kato was lost in his thoughts the fog had begun to open up. A patch of untainted land lay ahead of him, an area around the size of a crop circle, it was still enclosed by a dome of the fog but to Kato it was incredible. “I can see again” he felt like crying, he didn’t know how long he had been lost in the fog his only company the unforgiving white walls, but even minutes would have been too much.

“///????///” an unfamiliar sound echoed out, Kato’s head span focusing on a cloth wagon he had somehow missed resting in the centre of the dome. A stained yellow canvas had been pulled tightly over its frame, a wooden box at the front of the wagon and perched on it a person... nearly.

They were a dark startling shade of blue, and more than that they had tusks, one kept in pristine condition while the other was jagged and splintered only half the size of its partner. Their hair was coarse and looked more like a horses than it did a persons, but that hardly mattered. “Hello” Kato called out excitedly, waving animatedly, completely forgetting the situation that had brought him here in his haste to make a real connection.

‘Huh a blue person, got it blurson’ Kato thought proudly as he gazed at them. The blurson waved back shyly, with a slight smile that didn’t quite reach its eyes.

“///??/??/?” More voices could be heard and out of the wagon 3 more blursons emerge, accompanied by a white speckled ball of fur.

It was the poker.

“What, how?” Kato began to run over towards it.

“Rahh” one of the blursons barked at him, brandishing a spear protectively ahead of it.

“Oh right, sorry we know each other” Kato pointed to himself then at the now bewildered ball of fur. Was it really the poker? Or had the fog addled his mind.

The poker began to titter in its language and the blurson reluctantly lowered its spear, Kato nodded towards the blurson as he strode forward. He walked past the blursons and placed his hand on the poker. It was real, he had half expected his hand to pass straight through, as if it was an apparition that had been conjured by the fog.

He looked it dead in the eyes, “you should be dead” he winced. “Not that I want you to be dead, I mean I’m glad you’re here, uhhh” he trailed off. “Nice seeing you again” he tried weakly, the poker stared back at him.

‘Thank Cogul for language barriers’ he thought, circling his chest grateful his blunder had gone unnoticed.

He turned back to face the blursons who had patiently waited through the entire debacle. “So, what now?”