Mist Walkers
Key art
Filed beside the screening
The picture is Mist Walkers.
Scenario
2:57 · 16:9
A procession of hooded figures walks between ice-white walls, into mist. Their steps are even. The walls give way to a canyon of smoke, columns on either side, the procession small between them. The columns do not hold a roof. Smoke moves and the columns stay. Mud takes over from the stone underfoot. The change is a line, pale stone and then brown, and the hoods cross it without comment.
A bare foot meets the mud and finds a print already there, the same size, already filled with water. The water in the print does not ripple until the foot considers it. Three figures are ahead and do not turn. Their hoods stay aimed into the fog. The foot steps into the old print anyway. Water climbs the ankle and falls back into the same shape. Farther on, the procession passes a carved stone hall. An eye is carved into the wall. The hoods pass it. The eye does not move. It does not blink. Water from the mud does not reach the carving.
One hooded figure looks back. The hood's angle changes. The others continue into the fog and become three shapes, then two, then mist. The one who looked back stops. Mud holds the stopped foot. The bare foot, muddy now, stays in the print that was waiting. The print and the foot are the same size and do not become a new size. Ahead, the last hood thins and does not return as a person.
The carved eye remains on the wall. It does not follow the one who stopped. The ice-white passage behind the procession is empty. No second procession comes out of it. Ahead, the mist keeps the hoods that do not turn. The one who stopped stays in the mud, hood still angled back toward the passage, one bare foot set in the older print. Water in that print settles around the ankle and does not drain. The columns of smoke stand where they stood. The eye stays carved. The mist does not give the others back.
A drop falls from the hem of the stopped hood into the print and changes nothing about its size. The figure does not pull the foot free. The passage behind stays empty and white. The canyon ahead stays smoke. Between them one hood remains turned back, and the older print keeps the bare foot it was already shaped to keep.
Smoke between the columns thins and thickens and never becomes the hoods that went ahead. The carved eye gathers no water and no blink. Behind, the ice-white walls stay empty of a returning procession. The bare foot and the older print remain one shape. Mud does not climb higher than the ankle. The figure who looked back does not look forward again. The mist keeps what it took. The hall behind keeps nothing. One hood stays angled toward the white passage, and the print keeps the foot that agreed to fit it.