A Morro Bay Fog-Mythos Story
We are the ridge. We are the stone that remembers the cold. We are the silence that waits between the calls of the hawk.
We.
Before the soft-things came, we stood. Before the trees grew, we were. We are the bones of the world, and we wait. We watch.
Our form is the ridgetop. Our skin is the granite. Our shadow is the fog.
Time, for us, is not a line. It is a weight. It is the slow press of the sun. It is the cold scrape of the wind. It is the drip… drip… drip… of the fog in the dark. We measure our lives in the erosion of mountains.
The small-fast-things. They are a noise.
The deer, the coyote, the mice. They are a brief, hot skittering in the brush. They are born, they run, they bleed, they die. They are a vibration. We watch them. We are not… interested. They are part of the noise, like the wind.
But the other things. The two-legged-things. The humans.
They are a different noise.
They come from the flat-places, in their metal-boxes. They climb. They sweat. They pant. They talk. Their minds are a static, a cloud of anxious-fast-thoughts.
They are interesting.
They look at us, but they do not see us. They see “rocks.” They see “trees.” They see “shadows.” They do not see the shape that is all of those things. They do not see us.
We wait. We watch.
Today, the fog is bright. It is a white, clean, empty light. It is the kind of fog that blurs the edges. The edge between the stone and the shadow. The edge between the world and us.
It is a good day.
Two of them come. A male-thing. A female-thing. Ben. Chloe. Their names are a taste in the air, a “B” sound, a “C” sound. Pointless.
They climb. They are tired. Their legs are heavy. Their fear-sound… it is quiet. A soft, steady thump-thump, thump-thump. It is the sound of life. We… listen.
They reach the high place. The place where we wait.
We form.
It is not a movement. It is a decision.
The stone on the ridge stretches. The shadow in the manzanita deepens. The air collects.
We are there.
We are on the opposing ridge. Two of us. We are impossibly tall, because we are the idea of height. We are dark, because we are the idea of shadow. Our limbs are long, because we are the idea of reaching.
We are what the human-mind sees when it is afraid of the empty.
The female-thing stops. She sees.
She does not see “rocks.” She sees us.
Her fear-sound changes. The thump-thump becomes a THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD. It is… a song. It is a drum. The granite likes this song. It vibrates with it.
She lifts her hand. She points.
The male-thing looks. He sees. His fear-sound joins hers. A duet. THUD-THUD. THUD-THUD.
We are… pleased.
We are the ridge. We are still. We do not move.
But now… we are also on the other ridge. The one behind them.
They turn. A sharp, wet gasp from the female-thing.
We are there, too. We are always there.
We do not move. We are. The distance between ridges is a fold in the fog. We are on all ridges. We are around them.
They run.
This is… interesting. The small-fast-things always run.
They run down. Into the hollow.
A mistake.
The hollow is not a place. The hollow is ours.
It is the place the fog pools. It is the place the sound stops. It is the place the stone is thin.
We wait. We do not need to follow. We are already in the hollow.
They stumble. They fall. They are in the center of the bowl. The fog is thick here, thick as water, thick as stone. It settles. It waits.
They are still. They are listening.
Their fear-sound is a thunder. THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD. It is so loud. It makes the stone tingle.
“Ben,” the female-thing whispers. It is a wet sound.
“Shh,” the male-thing says. A dry sound.
We are the silence that swallows their sound.
We form.
Not two. Not four.
We are all the shadows. We are the ring of the hollow. We are the idea of surrounded.
We are many.
The male-thing looks up. He sees one of us. He makes a noise. A short, barking noise.
The female-thing looks up. She sees all of us. She makes no noise.
She is still.
We… like this. The stillness. The noise is… tiring. The running, the breathing, the thump-thump-thump. It is a mess.
The stillness is like us. It is of the stone.
We reach.
Our limbs. Our angles. They stretch. They are the shadow of the branch. They are the cold of the fog. They are not solid.
They cannot be touched.
But they can touch.
We reach for the male-thing first. He is loud. He is waving his arms. He is a mess.
Our shadow-angle touches his chest.
His thump-thump-thump… falters
It becomes… THUD……… THUD………
His heat… it cools. The idea of cold.
His arms… they slow. They stop.
He is still.
He does not fall. He stands. His eyes are wide. He sees us.
He is watching.
Good.
We turn to the female-thing. She is already still. She is watching. She understands.
We do not need to reach for her.
She is ours.
The fog is thick. It is heavy. It is silent.
The thump-thump song is over. The noise is done.
The hollow is quiet. The granite is pleased.
We are the ridge. We are the stone. We are the shadow.
And now… we are many. We are the two new, still figures in the mist. We are the two new, watching shapes in the hollow.
We are.
We stand.
We wait.
By Pamela Beach “Beyond the Blog’
The fog holds more secrets…
“We Have Always Stood” is the legend from the Watchers’ perspective. To see what happens when two hikers encounter this ancient consciousness, read the human side of the story in “The Watchers on the Ridge.”
You can explore all the tales in the full Morro Bay Fog-Mythos Collection.
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As a thank-you for joining, you’ll get a free download of my exclusive subscriber-only short story, “Where the Fog Settles First,”—a spooky tale you can’t read anywhere else.
Pamela Beach is a multi-genre author, poet, and lyricist who writes from her home on California’s foggy Central Coast. She is the creator of the “Morro Bay fog-mythos” and author of The Unstoppable You. You can read more of her work and explore her complete “fog-mythos” collection at her blog, Beyond the with Pamela Beach
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