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.
RYAN
Ryan’s eyes drank in the uniform hue of the sky, bright and vibrant in the light of the sun directly over him. Though there was no sign of roads or buildings, it was a majestic vision.
“Amazing,” Ryan murmured, shaking his head one more time, as he finally looked downward to begin his descent.
His nerves were teetering on the edge. Only minutes before, he had been standing in front of a restaurant just off the downtown area. He was now peering from the top of a tall tree, atop a hill in the midst of a forest that spread out in every direction as far as the eye could see.
Ryan had not gone more than a couple branches lower, gingerly bringing his weight to bear upon each one to make certain that they would hold his weight, when a dark shadow abruptly fell across him. His breath caught in his throat, as his eyes shot back towards the sky in alarm.
Gliding along the air currents was a very large, winged creature. It had a long, thin body that was covered with a light growth of purplish fur. Broad, membranous wings protruded from its back. A short, thick neck connected the body to an elongated head that resembled a cross between that of a serpent and a bird. Two narrow legs were tucked underneath its body, each ending in grasping talons whose ends looked wickedly sharp.
Ryan froze as the shadow from the animal crossed him and continued onward. It emitted a sustained, hollow cry that chilled his nerves.
The only comfort was that the flying monstrosity appeared to have not taken any notice of Ryan, as it showed no outward reaction to the young man’s presence. As the creature glided into the distance, Ryan counted himself lucky and resumed his descent, quickly angling down from branch to branch with less caution and more urgency. He jumped down to the ground, bypassing one lower branch, and paced over to Lee.
Lee’s face was one of sheer amazement, and his eyes remained fixed upward.
“I don’t know what in the world that thing was, but it was big, and to be on the safe side, I am staying down here,” Ryan announced.
“I think we’d better take things really carefully,” Lee said, his eyes looking about warily as if the forest would suddenly come alive with an array of menacing, unknown threats. “I think we’d better not assume anything. I think that’s the best thing to do right now.”
“Let’s get going, and be ready for the trees, if you see anything at all on the ground,” Ryan responded. “I have no idea what that thing in the air was, and I wouldn’t be sure that we won’t run into even more creatures we don’t know about… ones down here that don’t fly.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about the trees either,” Lee commented, eyes widening, “Look!”
He pointed towards the branches of a nearby tree.
Ryan followed Lee’s gesture to find a small, furry canine-like creature staring quietly right at them. The tree that Ryan had climbed had been very close to the tree that this creature inhabited, and as his eyes met those of the creature he flinched reflexively in surprise.
A ray of sunlight glinted off of one of the sharp talons by which the small mammal clutched the tree branch. Tucked close into its sides were a pair of dark, leathery wings. Its beady eyes, set back behind the length of its extended snout, seemed to be furtively studying the two humans.
As if it now recognized that its presence had been discovered, it chittered excitedly and leaped abruptly from the tree, spreading its wings and gliding off into the depths of the forest.
“No, we can’t be too sure,” Ryan agreed, unnerved further and finding himself growing more fearful by the second.
“And we can’t assume that smaller is any less of a threat,” Lee added.