Unfortunately, Colin was right. Even though I easily gain speed in the city, after a few bumps and cracks on the rural road, I do not feel like racing anymore. The sky once again gets covered by grey clouds, and the dusty winds force me to squint my eyes, and i end up steering my bicycle in near-blindness.

Colin keeps speeding past me and waiting at each turn until I finally waddle there on my hard means of transport. On one of these stops he hands me a strawberry-red raincoat.

"My aunt always tells me: If you're going somewhere, always take with you sunblock and an umbrella." He tells me. "But a raincoat is better. I really don't like these clouds!"

It's been a long time since we came out onto the forested area, and we're driving in twilight. The sky hangs above us in a gloomy grey veil, with dark clouds quickly moving on the lower layer, but there is surprisingly no wind in the forest. It suddenly gets cold and what little light remained in the trees gets covered by silver fog. But I'm not cold, quite the opposite actually. The damn bicycle sucks all the energy out of me, and the unending slope does not ease for a minute. Up-down... Up-down... My legs raise and fall. Up-down... I'm very tired and terribly sleepy. I haven't slept for more than a day now, and the silence, darkness and the rhythmic movement makes me almost doze off. Up-down... Up-down...

Colin once again meets me at a turn, and asks to stop for a bit. With great satisfaction I scramble off the torture mechanism and walk off to relieve myself in some nearby bushes. Through the twigs I can see Colin walking around, fiddling his bracelet around his wrist. When I return he nervously asks:

"How much time did it take you to get to Tory Val last time?"

"About two and a half hours, did you look at the time when we left? How much time passed since?"

"Four hours." Colin replies quietly, looking into the distance ahead.

"Four ho- What?!"

"Even a bit more than that." Colin shows me his watch. "We left at ten in the morning, and it is quarter past twelve now. Well, it was when the watch stopped."

I glance with horror at my own old but purely mechanical watch, gifted to me by my mother. Both arrows got stuck at the number twelve. I put my ear to it - no sound. The watch is broken.

"Does your phone work?"

Colin takes out his scratched smartphone - one of the cheapest models. The screen brightly lights up, but there is no signal. We then stare at it in shock as the full battery drains bar by bar, until the phone shuts down a few seconds later. Colin clearly curses, but I am in complete agreement with him.

"We couldn't have taken a wrong turn, right?" I ask a painfully obvious fact.

Yesterday I didn't notice a single intersection, the road went straight to the town on top of the hill.

Colin does not answer. He then points forward.

"There is thick fog over there, see?"

"Thick" is an understatement for the undulating milky fog, forming a dense wall on the road. The wall blends with the sky, covering the world in a dome of silence and unreality. About ten meters from us, not even the trees can be clearly distinguished.

"What will we do?" Colin almost whispers, mesmerized by waves of fog creeping on the road, almost near our feet. He shivers, either from nerves or the cold. 

But can I even drive through that? Frankly, driving in the opposite direction will be easy and quite fast. But even the thought of approaching the wall of fog and stepping inside it's muggy, moist innards causes me to almost panic. All of my instincts protest against it.

"Shall we go back? Or try to go around it?" he asks, wiping cloudy glasses with his hoodie.

"Around it? What do you mean?"

"I think that if it does not allow us to walk through, then we can try going around it. As you can see, the fog is concentrated on the road, but if we go through the forest..."

"Are you serious?"

"Well yes... we just have to keep by the hill. Does it matter which direction do we come into Tory Val? We don't have to necessarily come in through the front gate."

"It's dangerous..."

"Life is dangerous." Colin counters. "Well, what do we do? Your decision."

"And you will do what I tell you to?"

"Of course, what choice do I have?"

"Then you will take you bicycle and pedal home. "

"And you?"

"And I will try to go through the forest. "

"Alone?"

"Exactly!"

"It was my suggestion to go through the forest. You would not have thought about that without me!" In Colin's voice there is bitterness.

"I understand. Thank you for everything. You are a very brave boy, but I don't have the right to risk your life, especially since there is something weird going on here."

"Can I say something, just don't interrupt, okay?" Colin asks and I nod. "I'm not a coward, but I'm really scared to go back alone. The watches stopped, time is weird, and the road seems endless. What happens if I go back by myself, hour after hour, and the only thing in front of me will be the endless foggy forest? And another thing... let's take the best possible outcome: I return home, you come back in the evening with your band and we all drink and laugh about it. But even then I will remember that I left you here by yourself and will never forgive myself for that betrayal. It is very important for me, you understand?"

He stands in front of me with a raised chin, expecting an answer. Even though he's still a kid, he has the confidence of an adult in his decision.

"Very touching." I say, trying to make is sound overly sarcastic. "There's no getting rid of you, is there?"

"Why would you want to get rid of me? I could be useful! By the way, here, grab this just in case." He takes off a small leather bag hung by a string around his neck and hands it to me. "I already have protection, but you don't."

"Eewww... " I push his hand away. "Get this artifact away from me, it probably has generations of bacteria on it, and who knows from where."

"Better bacteria than... than god knows what!" Colin lashes out at me. "Here I am, trying to ensure your safety, but you don't care!"

Another touching argument. How can anyone resist?