“It’s all around us now,” Lee observed with fascination.
The fog had fully enveloped Lee, Ryan, and the entire restaurant. Looking behind him, Lee had been slightly unnerved to discover that he could not see the front facing of the restaurant anymore. There was not even a hint of it, walled off as it was by the opaque mists.
“It’s so thick,” Ryan commented. “Think that you can even drive in this stuff?”
Lee glanced over Ryan with an expression of disbelief. “Drive? Are you crazy?”
“Probably,” retorted Ryan, laughing. “And if you are too afraid of a little fog, Lee… if it scares you too much, I would be glad to drive us out of here.”
“Great idea. Turn my only car over to you,” Lee replied with a tenor of sarcasm. “Have your license with you tonight? Oh, I forgot… you don’t have one, do you?
“Hasn’t stopped me in the past,” Ryan shot back, giving Lee a wink.
“No, and one of those trips got you a nice visit to court,” Lee retorted. “We don’t need any more of that.”
“Hey, with fog this thick, the cops won’t even be able to see us driving out of it,” Ryan said. “Don’t think they’ll take too much notice of me.”
“Not until we find ourselves crashing right into a cruiser, at least,” Lee said, shaking his head. “That would be my luck if I ever threw you the keys.”
“You have such little faith,” Ryan said, chuckling.
“Not a matter of faith. I know you too well,” Lee responded, grinning widely.
“That, you do, Lee,” Ryan concurred, laughing.
“Well, what do you say? Instead of arguing about whether you or I drive, I think we should just wait this out for a little while back in the restaurant. If you are hungry, I can whip something up really quickly,” Lee stated.
“It’d be lot better than standing out here,” Ryan replied.
Lee and Ryan turned to go back to the restaurant. Lee was simply glad that he had only walked a few feet away from the building, continuing to be astounded at the sheer density of the fog. He stepped slowly, putting his hands ahead of him so that he did not walk face first into the facade of his restaurant.
Lee had traversed only about four short strides when he heard the ground crunch beneath his feet. Looking down, he saw the unmistakable appearance of a forest floor beneath his feet, solid earth covered by foliage debris and grass. He took one tentative stride directly backwards, but the soles of his shoes met more soil, leaves, and twigs, instead of pavement.
“What?” Ryan whispered at Lee’s side. He had drawn to a halt and was also staring down at the ground.
Lee was confounded. He had walked those streets every day, and knew that there was nothing like what was now beneath his feet within any short distance of the restaurant.
The ground that he could see slowly started to grow, and all of it resembled the initial patch. Bringing his gaze back up, he saw that the fog was beginning to dissipate everywhere.
He took a deep breath, filled with tension as he waited for the fog to roll back and reveal the dark, starry firmament of a night sky. He knew that everything would be as it was once again.
There was a simple explanation. He and Ryan had somehow gotten misdirected in the fog, to where someone had dumped a pile of excavated dirt and debris. Lee must not have taken notice of it during the day, which was not a surprise as he always had twenty things on his mind at once.
To his amazement, everything around him was growing steadily brighter. Starting as a dim ambience, the light swelled considerably as the fog lessened in density.
Lee knew that the overall illumination was already well beyond the capability of street lamps, igniting his sense of alarm again. His mouth fell agape as the fog thinned further and began to part. He looked up, awestruck, into the depths of a bright, midday sky, visible through a matrix of intertwining branches that belonged to a host of trees surrounding them; a breathtaking, blue-green sky, of a hue that Lee had never before witnessed.
Lee began to turn around slowly, in complete circles, as it dawned on him that he was standing in the midst of a great forest. Rays of light filtered through the dense covering of leaves and branches overhead. The forest floor spread outward as far as he could see to the left and right, traveling up and around the slopes of large hills looming all about the bewildered two figures.
“You seein’ what I’m seein’?” Ryan asked in a highly agitated voice. “Tell me you aren’t seeing this.”
“If you are seeing a big forest all around you, and a weird sky, then we are seeing the same thing,” Lee responded in a low voice. His eyes darted in every direction, as he tried to find a modicum of sense in what he was experiencing.
The forty-three year old restaurant owner and the sixteen-year-old youth stood in stunned silence for several more minutes.
“So, what do we do now?” queried Ryan, finally breaching the impasse.
“That is the question of the hour,” Lee stated. It took him another few moments to muster up the rest of his words. “Maybe we start walking. We should try to find out where we are, or if anything’s around.”
“I don’t know. We don’t know this place. We don’t know what’s around here. It might not be all that friendly. We don’t know,” Ryan said, his words tumbling out more quickly from his trembling mouth.
As stunned as Lee was, he still caught the tone and pace of Ryan’s voice, and looked over towards the youth with understanding. Ryan’s eyes exhibited the look of a frightened youth, certainly much more than the look of the hardened, street-smart young man that he saw himself as.
“I am open to suggestions, we can figure this out together,” Lee said, keeping his voice calm so that he did not add any impetus to Ryan’s rising panic. He did not want the young man to become unhinged, and he sensed an acute danger of that happening any moment.
Ryan paused a few moments before answering. Though Lee was anything but settled, Ryan finally seemed to draw some stability from the older man’s composure.
“No, you are right. The top of the hill would be best. I can scale one of the trees there, and see if I can get a view of anything,” Ryan said, as he started off towards the slope that Lee had been eyeing. “See if I can find a road or buildings… something like that.”
Lee strode briskly next to Ryan, as the two mounted the long slope and finally reached the summit of the broad hill.
Near to the top, Ryan moved over to the base of a tall oak tree, which had strong lower branches extending out from the trunk just within reach of Ryan’s fingers. He jumped up, grabbed the branch, and pulled himself up in a smooth motion. He methodically navigated up the heights of the tree, climbing from branch to branch with little difficulty.
Lee stood still on the ground below, a look of concern on his face as he watched the other’s careful progress.
At long last, Ryan hugged the trunk of the tree as his feet rested upon one of the uppermost branches. His body weight caused a slight sway as he craned his neck to look out over the treetops.
Lee waited pensively as he watched Ryan scan the horizons. Lee remained tense as he saw that Ryan’s expression remained unchanged.
Finally, Ryan looked back down towards Lee and shook his head in frustration. “Nothing. Nothing but a lot more of this,” Ryan announced sourly.
With a resigned sigh, he held onto the tree and rested for several moments, looking outward as Lee patiently awaited his return below.