Kaelen pulled his camera from his coat. This was the shot he had come for. He framed the scene carefully: the bench in the lower third, the ghostly silhouettes of the trees fading into the fog behind it, and the infinite, soft white of the snow filling the rest of the space. It looked exactly like a desktop wallpaper—a beautiful, melancholic scene meant to be stared at during moments of quiet contemplation.
He clicked the shutter, the sound startlingly loud in the dead quiet of the park. Wallpaper Snow, Lonely Bench, Trees, Foggy Park
Ahead, the familiar outlines of the ancient oak trees began to dissolve into the dense fog. Their dark, gnarled branches stretched upward like arthritic fingers, clawing at the mist that swallowed them. The fog was a living thing today, rolling in slow, silent waves across the open meadow, obscuring the path ahead and erasing the world behind. Kaelen pulled his camera from his coat