“We’ll have to go slowly,” Mershad cautioned, taking the first step forward, grasping his satchel strap with his right hand. “Work our way to the sidewalk, and from there it should be easy enough.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” Erika replied.
Erika walked closely by his side. They went painstakingly, step by step. There was just enough visibility that they became aware of trees before they smacked their faces into the hard trunks.
After they had moved about twenty arduous paces, Mershad noticed that their visibility was gradually increasing. He made no comment, continuing to press onward.
Looking down, he perceived that there were more leaves and twigs on the ground than he had observed before, even a fallen branch that he had not noticed on his way in. The university’s maintenance staff usually kept the grounds around the student center very well groomed.
“We must have gotten changed around,” Mershad said with some discomfort. “We should have hit the sidewalk by now. I know that we’ve been walking in the right direction.”
“Well, this place is not that big, we’ll run into it sooner or later,” Erika added. “Besides, it looks like our visibility is increasing.”
“Yes it is,” Mershad replied, glad that she was noticing the improving visibility as well. It meant that it was not just his hopeful imagination.
He took a couple more steps, when he suddenly tripped and fell forward. With a startled outcry, he slung his hands forward in reflex, casting his satchel ahead as he braced for the expected impact.
“Are you okay?” Erika said in great concern, dropping to her knees next to him.
Groaning, Mershad shook his head as he brought himself up to his knees slowly. He had caught his fall at the last moment, and was not injured other than a few light scratches.
Brushing his chest off, he looked behind him. A large tree branch lay across his path.
“Wonderful,” Mershad muttered, not wanting to know what had happened to his laptop. He looked sheepishly to Erika, highly embarrassed. “I didn’t think there was anything on the ground. Didn’t notice any fallen branches coming in here.”
“It’s okay. As long as you are okay,” Erika said quickly, her eyes full of worry. “Let’s find your satchel.”
They both looked all around, but could see no sign of the satchel. Mershad was perplexed, as he knew that it could not have fallen very far from where he stood.
More than ever, the ground that Mershad could see beneath his feet looked markedly different than it had seemed before when he visited the area. There was a sprawling cover of debris, of fallen leaves, dirt, twigs, and grasses all about them, as if the surface of a wild forest. It was not the well-cropped, rich green lawn that he had walked through numerous times before. The feeling of unease grew faster within him.
Even stranger, the rate of improved visibility was accelerating, along with the emergence of a steady breeze that flowed all around them. It was as if the fog was reversing itself, departing as quickly as it had come.
Mershad and Erika remained wordless, fixed in place, their attentions captured by the bizarre phenomenon. Their range of sight increased by twenty, thirty, and then forty feet.
Trees began to appear out of the misty air, and the uneven contours of the ground, with the rough covering upon it, spread out in all directions around them. Mershad struggled to comprehend what was happening.
There was no sign of the sidewalk, the student center, or even a small patch of the rich, trimmed grass turf that they had been sitting on just minutes before. He barely moved a muscle as the fog steadily fell away, continuing to reveal the unexpected environment.
“What is going on here?” Mershad stammered, his eyes widened in trepidation as he looked around.
Erika shook her head in disbelief, staring ahead. Her voice was uncharacteristically full of anxiety. “I just don’t know. I just don’t know.”
The fog proceeded to thin out on all sides. Strong rays of light began to cut through to them from above, a multitude of beams piercing the diminishing fog as they reached through the leaves and branches of the surrounding trees.
“What is this? What in the world is…” Erika began, her words trailing off as the air above them finally cleared up.
The strong light of a mid-day sun was revealed, cascading down from a nearly cloudless sky spread out far above the trees. It was a uniquely blue-greenish sky, like nothing that Mershad had ever seen before.
Mershad and Erika now found themselves in the midst of a great forest, with matured trees of several varieties rising up high all around them. The bright chirping of birds met their ears, coming from all around, amongst the lofty branches, but it was the surreal sky above that transfixed his initial attention.
ERIKA
Erika continued to stare upwards, entirely stunned.
There were no cloud masses to bar the view of the smooth, luxuriant sky, the light radiating from a solitary sun that seemed to be directly overhead.
The blue-greenish tint to the sky was remarkable.
It was turquoise, like the surface of the waters about the Caribbean islands that Erika had once taken a vacation to with friends, on a break from school.
Beautiful and vivid, it was nonetheless frightening. At the very least, though she did not consciously acknowledge it, the commanding presence of the sun was a stabilizing and comforting element to her jostled psyche.
“What do we do?” Mershad asked, his eyes still wide in a look of surprise and bewilderment.
“I have no idea,” Erika said.
“This can’t be a dream,” Mershad remarked.
Some beads of sweat now stood out upon his forehead. He reached down and rubbed his arms, and even felt his own face, as if about to pinch it to test the reality of the moment.
He looked over towards Erika with a helpless expression. “This can’t be a dream.”
“I know that it isn’t. I know when I am asleep, and when I am not,” Erika said slowly. Her eyes were filled with fear, but she had already started to reach down into deep, internal reservoirs of personal strength to gain some elemental bearings. “This is real. Make no mistake about it. Whatever it is, we are both in it, it is real, and we had better acknowledge that first and foremost.”
As she spoke the stark words, some more of that strength welled up in her. She took a few cautious steps forward.
Her shoes crunched on the debris-strewn forest floor. Mershad stared after her, until she turned and beckoned for him to follow her. Gingerly, he took a step, then a second, and slowly trailed after her.
She continued onward, feeling the hard ground beneath every step. Unexpectedly, she discovered that she was taking notice of the very air. It felt exceptionally fresh and clean within her lungs. She took many deep breaths of the sweet air into her, as her heart rate began to steady from the initial shock.
Though she was no naturalist, she knew that the trees around them were of types that she was familiar with. Likewise, the chirping and chattering coming from the branches above was akin to the sounds that she had heard before on wilderness hikes.
Other than the color of the sky itself, she could not help but think that they were not too far removed from the university. The state was filled with thickly forested areas, and as far as Erika knew, they were in any one of those regions. It was just a mystery as to how they had gotten there, perhaps something conjectured in some obscure journal of theoretical physics.
The continuing commotion in the branches attracted her attention. She looked upwards, searching for the squirrels that she expected were running about the trees, just as they did all around the university campus. She knew the sight of a few little squirrels would be something else to grasp onto, as her mind struggled with the unprecedented instability of reality itself.