"Fog Spill" Introduction

My children's story (I guess, rather older children's story), Fog Spill, contains one of my favorite plots of the stories I've written.  At least part of the plot.  Somewhere around the middle the whole thing died.  I don't know how.  It reads as if I tired of the story and just wanted to finish it.  But this is so untrue!  Anyway, I decided to break it into chapters, so instead of a long short story it is now a fairly short chapter book.  I'm considering new scenes, a new antagonist of sorts, altering my own assumptions at the story's beginning, etc.  Also: the title.  Love the title.  But I almost want to coin my coined phrase into a word. Fogspill.  The problem is that this could break up as either fog-spill or fogs-pill.  I will probably leave it as a phrase, but please post any input!  (You all know I crave input, right?  "love it" and "burn it" are equally useful to me!)  

Having rambled, here's the first chapter.  I tend to write short chapters (especially introduction chapters), so don't be too alarmed.  Once again, there have been only minuscule revisions.  I can guarantee that, come next week, I will re-read this chapter and think, "Did I really post that?!  Ugh!  It's horrible!  EWWW!!!"

         

Have you ever wondered about the fog?  A sea in the valley.  An avalanche over the hills.  You’ve squinted through it on early mornings; tried to push it from your eyes.  Makes the traffic lights blurry.  Thick and billowing when far away; light and lingering when all around you.  Shy thing.  Almost lets you touch it, but only almost.  

 
Have you ever wondered if maybe, were you to sit very still and very quiet, you could touch the fog?  Maybe it gets tired, sometimes.  Seeking its way through all the bustling and the noise and the severity.  Maybe, once in a while, it wants to rest.  If you sat still and quiet and small, maybe it would nestle down beside you and lay against your shoulder.  Or pass slowly by, taking and kissing your fingertips.  Or maybe it would surround you with all its great quietness--wrap tightly about you because you’re not alone and it’s not alone and you’re together.  Perhaps you would even laugh for the fog.  Laughter soothes all cold things.  The fog must get cold: scorned by serious mouths, pushed away by turned-up collars and turned-down hat brims.  If you are happy it will know.  If you laugh it will laugh with you.

I fear these are silly ifs and maybes.  As you grow people say, ‘The fog is not a person.  It is not shy.  It does not get tired.  It does not kiss.  It does not laugh.  It cannot have joy or happiness or love.  It does not know; it does not feel.’  For these people never meet fog.  It never taps upon their shoulders.  Never whispers into their ears.  

But you are real.  If someone didn’t believe in your realness, would you try to tell him?  If shy,

would you turn up your head to callous faces?  If tired, would you ask safety of one certain to shove you away?  Would not you recoil from those who’d rip out your heart to prove you cannot feel?

I can offer no proof.  All anyone cares for now is proof.  Rather a funny sounding word, isn’t it?  Proof.  Such a funny word for something so serious.  Maybe it’s not all that serious.  Who are we to ask for proof?  To say that we can prove or disprove?  It is when we look for proof that we forget what is real.  What is good.  What is true.  It is then that we begin to fade into that great solid shadow, where life is worth only its measure.

I have no proof.  I have no measure.  I have nothing solid.  I only have stories.  Just stories.  A whisper, a song, a heart pounding with love and trust and fear and sorrow and hope and joy.  A voice that cries.  A hand that reaches.  But I leave this to you.  This choice.  This test.  Place a man against a meter stick, and tell me which is real.