The fog is dense tonight. It curls around lampposts, winds through windows, and rolls down streets in a thick cloud; a roiling mass creeping silently down alleyways, catching passersby by surprise. Colours blend into each other so that the sky and the streets of this austere town are the same drab, oppressive gray.
The people soak up the colour too, like human sponges. They huddle on street corners in their dark clothes, all talking in hushed voices, voices hushed by the ever present fog. Fog weighs down on their throats, their heads, their chests, pressing down as if every individual bears the weight of the world upon their shoulders. Fog seeps into their lungs, crowding, filling, drowning. Fog bleeds into their bodies, draining the colour and leaving them pale wraiths. The city is a gray, bleak town filled past the brim with this ever present miasma.
But what is that? A laugh; a song; a pinprick of light in this dismal world? If you look, look very closely, so very, very closely, you might be able to see the source: a person has smiled. Not of course, one of those simpering smiles, or the All Too Happy and Very Fake Smile, or a smile that doesn't show your teeth, but a real smile; a smile that spreads past the mouth to the ears; a smile that can bring laughter; a smile that can part clouds. And part clouds it does.
Cheeks become ruddy, hands become warm, smiles flash at friends, neighbours, and strangers, backs straighten as somber layers are shed, voices ring out, no longer confined by dismal walls of fog. A laugh issues from a corner of the town, then another, then hundreds. The people rejoice. The people thrive. The people throw off their gloom, their mournfulness, their cheerlessness. The people live.
The town is still cloaked in blanket of fog. Streets are still gray. Sky and buildings are indistinguishable. But the people are now alive. The people love. The people laugh. The people sing. The people glow.
+fin+
