The Forest Ranger – Part 1: Lost in the Fog

"You are off the trail," said a voice.

Oliver spun. The fog was thick as wool, pale grey between enormous dark firs, and the voice seemed to come from every direction at once. He had been walking for three hours with a map he could no longer read. His boots were soaked and his phone had no signal.

A tall figure stepped out of the mist, in a green jacket and a broad-brimmed hat, with a torch in one hand and a thermos in the other.

"I'm so sorry," said Oliver. "I think I'm lost."

"You are, a little. It is a good thing you stopped." The man tilted the torch. He was thirty-five, bearded, with soft grey eyes and a forest ranger's badge on his chest. "Matthias. I was looking for you."

"For me?"

"A woman at the inn said a young man went up alone this morning without a coat." He held out the thermos. "Tea. Very hot."

Oliver, thirty-two, an architect from Hamburg, drank gratefully and shivered. Matthias gave him a spare jacket, a wool scarf and a gentle nudge down the path. They walked through the fog in silence, the great trees looming and fading around them, and Oliver realised, with some surprise, that he was no longer afraid.

The ranger's cabin sat in a clearing below the ridge, a small timbered hut with a stone chimney and smoke curling into the mist. Inside it was snug and dry, with a stove, a long table and a very large pot bubbling on the hob.

"Sit," said Matthias. "You are blue."

"Thank you. I don't know how to repay you."

"You will eat the soup." He smiled. "And perhaps stay until the fog lifts. It may take a day or two."

"Is that a threat?"

"It is weather." Matthias ladled soup into a bowl. "But if you would like it to be a threat, I would like to kiss you, when you are warm."

Continue the story: Part 2 – Clearing.

Continue the story: Part 2 – Clearing.