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against the wall. The only thing in view is still endless ocean and nothing. I have no idea how long I was asleep, how much time has passed, how far we’ve traveled …
    “We’re losing altitude,” reports John, inspecting dials and poking buttons.
    “I don’t want to drown,” the delivery boy mutters to himself, eyes glued to the pilot’s console with a look of utter loss. “It’s a horrible way to go.”
    “At this rate, we’ll explode before we drown,” mutters John with a grunt. “See? Bright side to everything.”
    “NOW’S NOT A TIME FOR JOKES!” shrieks the boy.
    The alarm keeps spitting digital bullets into our ears, flooding the cabin with aural panic. Marianne sucks at her fingers and tosses fruitless suggestions on what to do, to which John irritably explains that they’re not plummeting into the ocean; we’re merely descending at a miniscule rate. Something’s clearly wrong—hence the alarm—but he wouldn’t have a first clue of what. The delivery boy wonders aloud if the craft might float in water. “Just what we need,” moans Mari miserably, “to turn our adventure into a lost-at-sea nightmare.”
    “Land.”
    The three of them turn to me, their arguing ceased. Mari and the boy are confused while John stares at me, brooding with dark resolve.
    “Land,” I repeat, hurrying to the front and pointing at the foggy glass.
    The others look. With the farthest reach of our eyes, we see a strip of darkness so thin we’re likely all doubting it’s even there—a mere illusion, this thread of shadow stitching together the distant horizon and sea. Watching in utter silence, we hold our breath as the hovercraft floats across the air, the ocean rushing past us beneath our toes. Is the shadow growing closer? Is it real?
    Mari whispers, “It looks …”
    “Ugly,” finishes the boy in fear.
    “Mysterious,” agrees Mari.
    With the crawl of each second that passes, the needle of darkness that separates water and sky begins to grow tiny stems that almost don’t exist. The tiny, tiny stems grow sluggishly taller, taller, taller … until they become the smallest skeletons of dead, leafless trees I’ve ever seen. What at first looks to be an innocent cloud soon reveals itself as a thick, wooly blanket of mist that sleeps atop the trees. This mist doesn’t stir or move or swirl. Neither do the trees seem to sway. It looks like a painting against the sky. The thorny terrain grows and grows until it becomes something as promised and imminent as death itself.
    John rushes to the controls, gently pressing his palm to the touchscreen while the alarm incessantly barks. He pokes about the console, searching for something.
    “He doesn’t know how to land the craft,” the delivery boy realizes in horror. “We’re going to crash!”
    “Of course I don’t know how to land the damn thing. Do I look like a pilot to you?” John growls at him, his ire causing his hand to flinch, which in turn causes the craft to twitch. He literally holds the vehicle in the palm of his hand—and all of us with it. “If I can’t get it to slow down, I’m going to guide us to a plain or flatland of some sort. If we crash, we’re going to crash gently , damn it.”
    Land rushes towards us much quicker now. In stark contrast to our own beach, the sands here look so grey, it’s like they’ve had their color extracted somehow. The shore comes closer and closer and closer. The mists …
    “I can’t see anything,” John realizes, and the fear in his voice does nothing to reassure the rest of us. “That thick fog, I can’t see through it. I can’t see where we’re landing. I can’t see anything!”
    Before we can count the fingers on our hands, the shore is behind us and yet another vast blanket lies in all directions, except this blanket is made of an unmoving, opaque, grey-white haze. I daresay the view inspires far more fear and mystery than the ocean did.
    I’m at John’s side. “You can do it,” I cheer