Fanfiction: Haze (Night in the Woods)
Happy new year! May it be a better one.
As in 2019, I didn't officially participate in Yuletide but ended up writing a couple of fics. Here's the first: a Night in the Woods treat for
plastics. I'd never written for this game before, and it was interesting to try to capture some sense of the tone and atmosphere.
I actually got a lovely comment on this from one of you guys before reveals; hi,
implicated2!
Title: Haze
Fandom: Night in the Woods
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1,200
Summary: Mae and Bea go on a road trip. Unless they're dreaming. It's hard to be sure.
“I don’t know if we ever went on that road trip,” Mae says.
The air is shimmering with heat. The land is golden and seems to stretch out endlessly in front of them. Wheat, she thinks, or sand. She can’t parse it.
She doesn’t know where they are.
Bea just looks at her for a moment. “The road trip we’re on right now?”
“I think,” Mae says, carefully, “I might be dreaming.”
-
It’s a river they’re driving alongside, according to Bea, but the fog’s so thick that who knows. Just a milky void, maybe swirling a little if Mae looks hard enough. It feels like the edge of an old videogame level, like if they crashed through the barrier and fell they’d just keep falling.
Possum Springs isn’t much of a place. But it felt real, it at least felt close to real. It’s where Mae grew up; it’s something she understands.
She’d hoped she could at least manage a short road trip. It feels like they’ve been travelling for a lot longer than the eight days they planned on, but she can’t remember much of it, so maybe she’s wrong?
She’s with Bea, and that helps. Bea’s something real in the unfamiliar surroundings.
The fog lifts, in the end, or they drive out of it, if it was ever there at all.
They stop in a park to take a walk, and there are lakes and waterfalls, corridors of trees, the colours starting to blaze red. Mae thought it was summer; it felt like summer a couple of days ago, too hot for this kind of scenery. Was she dreaming then, or is she dreaming now?
She picks up a wet leaf from the path and shreds it. It comes apart like a real thing.
But she doesn’t know this place. There’s no way to know that it’s always a park. When she’s not looking at it, it could just be parking lots.
Maybe the reality is that she’s buried alive in the collapsed mine, slowly running out of air.
Maybe she’s still at school; maybe she never dropped out and came back at all.
She’s not sure which possibility scares her more.
-
“We could go to the Grand Canyon,” Mae says.
Bea gives her a look. Just a quick one; she’s driving. Mae makes a quick mental note: if she wants to avoid judgemental stares, she should only bring up her stupid ideas when Bea is driving. “The Grand Canyon is literally two thousand miles away.”
Okay, yeah, this isn’t meant to be an across-the-country road trip. Bea can’t spare that much time away from work, and Mae can’t risk losing it again. The plan is to stay close to Possum Springs, so they can get back quickly if there’s an emergency.
But the Grand Canyon is a real place, it feels like it could be a kind of anchor. Something that would let Mae stand there and look at it and go, Yeah, that’s definitely the Grand Canyon, I’m definitely here.
The scenery outside the car window is a blur of foliage. It feels like it’s been the same blur for hours, like someone set up a looping tape of fall colours and they’re just hoping Mae doesn’t notice.
“We could check out Pine Creek Gorge,” Bea suggests. “They call it the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania.”
Mae looks it up on her phone; it’s the oldest, cheapest model she could find, but it can just about handle Internet access.
She was kind of hoping it’d look like the actual Grand Canyon in miniature. It’s nothing like it. She doesn’t know what she expected from something with ‘of Pennsylvania’ tacked on the end.
If it turns out that this actually isn’t real, Mae’s going to be pissed off with her imagination for not being more ambitious. Their grand adventure together, seeing the sights of Pennsylvania.
She does a little more investigation. “Hey, Hershey’s Chocolate World is on the way.”
Well, yeah, it’s south of them; the gorge is north. But it’d be on the way if they just kept on going until they looped around the world.
“That sounds awful,” Bea says.
“Yep,” Mae says. “We definitely have to go.”
-
They reach Hershey the same day, or maybe the next. How many days have they been travelling? Mae doesn’t remember sleeping. It feels like the nights have been scattered in pieces throughout each day, an hour of darkness here and there in an endless stretch of afternoon.
Hershey’s Chocolate World has a terrible ride where a terrifying grinning chocolate bar gives them safety instructions and they’re serenaded by terrifying animatronic cows. Bea sits inside their slow-moving pod, her arms folded and her jaw tight, obviously hating every second of it. It’s everything Mae could have hoped for.
It doesn’t help to shake the sense that this is some kind of fever dream they’re both having. But it makes Mae laugh pretty hard, and that’s not bad.
-
It’s not the Grand Canyon. The colours, the scale, the trees. It’s just a gorge, nothing so distinctive and famous that Mae can look at it and know that it’s part of the real world.
The temperature’s perfect, which doesn’t help. No sense of warmth or chill or wind to tell her there’s something outside her. The air is so still around her that it might as well not be there at all.
There’s something calming about it, though, looking down at the river winding through those wooded slopes. Something about being up high, safe on the viewing platform, and seeing how everything below them has become smaller.
It’s so soothing that Mae almost isn’t tempted to vandalise the pay-to-use telescopes.
She’ll resist the urge. Bea wouldn’t be impressed.
“This is pretty cool,” she says, instead.
Bea is looking out on the trees, somewhere close to smiling. “Yeah, it’s okay.”
Someone’s scratched Fuck. in small letters into the safety railing. The capitalisation and period make it look strangely formal. Mae doesn’t know why her mind would make up those details. But there’s a lot she doesn’t know about her own mind.
There’s some kind of bird of prey drifting below them, following the line of the river.
Mae still doesn’t feel like this road trip is real, exactly. But the scenery’s good to look at. Maybe that’s enough?
“If I’m here, I’m glad I’m here,” Mae says. “And if I’m not here... I guess I’m glad I think I’m here?”
Bea looks over at her. “You don’t really sound like you think you’re here.”
“Wow,” Mae says. “Way to ruin the moment.”
It’s that weird time when the sun is close to setting and the light is warm and soft and intense, like everything’s a fond memory instead of the moment you’re meant to be living in right now.
Maybe that’s it. This might be real; it might be a dream. Or maybe it’s a memory, old Mae Borowski looking back at her twenties from her rocking chair.
“Sorry,” Bea says.
Mae shakes her head. “Nah. Moments are there to be ruined.”
If that means she makes it long enough to get a sweet rocking chair, she’ll take it.
As in 2019, I didn't officially participate in Yuletide but ended up writing a couple of fics. Here's the first: a Night in the Woods treat for
plastics. I'd never written for this game before, and it was interesting to try to capture some sense of the tone and atmosphere.
I actually got a lovely comment on this from one of you guys before reveals; hi,
implicated2!
Title: Haze
Fandom: Night in the Woods
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: 1,200
Summary: Mae and Bea go on a road trip. Unless they're dreaming. It's hard to be sure.
“I don’t know if we ever went on that road trip,” Mae says.
The air is shimmering with heat. The land is golden and seems to stretch out endlessly in front of them. Wheat, she thinks, or sand. She can’t parse it.
She doesn’t know where they are.
Bea just looks at her for a moment. “The road trip we’re on right now?”
“I think,” Mae says, carefully, “I might be dreaming.”
-
It’s a river they’re driving alongside, according to Bea, but the fog’s so thick that who knows. Just a milky void, maybe swirling a little if Mae looks hard enough. It feels like the edge of an old videogame level, like if they crashed through the barrier and fell they’d just keep falling.
Possum Springs isn’t much of a place. But it felt real, it at least felt close to real. It’s where Mae grew up; it’s something she understands.
She’d hoped she could at least manage a short road trip. It feels like they’ve been travelling for a lot longer than the eight days they planned on, but she can’t remember much of it, so maybe she’s wrong?
She’s with Bea, and that helps. Bea’s something real in the unfamiliar surroundings.
The fog lifts, in the end, or they drive out of it, if it was ever there at all.
They stop in a park to take a walk, and there are lakes and waterfalls, corridors of trees, the colours starting to blaze red. Mae thought it was summer; it felt like summer a couple of days ago, too hot for this kind of scenery. Was she dreaming then, or is she dreaming now?
She picks up a wet leaf from the path and shreds it. It comes apart like a real thing.
But she doesn’t know this place. There’s no way to know that it’s always a park. When she’s not looking at it, it could just be parking lots.
Maybe the reality is that she’s buried alive in the collapsed mine, slowly running out of air.
Maybe she’s still at school; maybe she never dropped out and came back at all.
She’s not sure which possibility scares her more.
-
“We could go to the Grand Canyon,” Mae says.
Bea gives her a look. Just a quick one; she’s driving. Mae makes a quick mental note: if she wants to avoid judgemental stares, she should only bring up her stupid ideas when Bea is driving. “The Grand Canyon is literally two thousand miles away.”
Okay, yeah, this isn’t meant to be an across-the-country road trip. Bea can’t spare that much time away from work, and Mae can’t risk losing it again. The plan is to stay close to Possum Springs, so they can get back quickly if there’s an emergency.
But the Grand Canyon is a real place, it feels like it could be a kind of anchor. Something that would let Mae stand there and look at it and go, Yeah, that’s definitely the Grand Canyon, I’m definitely here.
The scenery outside the car window is a blur of foliage. It feels like it’s been the same blur for hours, like someone set up a looping tape of fall colours and they’re just hoping Mae doesn’t notice.
“We could check out Pine Creek Gorge,” Bea suggests. “They call it the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania.”
Mae looks it up on her phone; it’s the oldest, cheapest model she could find, but it can just about handle Internet access.
She was kind of hoping it’d look like the actual Grand Canyon in miniature. It’s nothing like it. She doesn’t know what she expected from something with ‘of Pennsylvania’ tacked on the end.
If it turns out that this actually isn’t real, Mae’s going to be pissed off with her imagination for not being more ambitious. Their grand adventure together, seeing the sights of Pennsylvania.
She does a little more investigation. “Hey, Hershey’s Chocolate World is on the way.”
Well, yeah, it’s south of them; the gorge is north. But it’d be on the way if they just kept on going until they looped around the world.
“That sounds awful,” Bea says.
“Yep,” Mae says. “We definitely have to go.”
-
They reach Hershey the same day, or maybe the next. How many days have they been travelling? Mae doesn’t remember sleeping. It feels like the nights have been scattered in pieces throughout each day, an hour of darkness here and there in an endless stretch of afternoon.
Hershey’s Chocolate World has a terrible ride where a terrifying grinning chocolate bar gives them safety instructions and they’re serenaded by terrifying animatronic cows. Bea sits inside their slow-moving pod, her arms folded and her jaw tight, obviously hating every second of it. It’s everything Mae could have hoped for.
It doesn’t help to shake the sense that this is some kind of fever dream they’re both having. But it makes Mae laugh pretty hard, and that’s not bad.
-
It’s not the Grand Canyon. The colours, the scale, the trees. It’s just a gorge, nothing so distinctive and famous that Mae can look at it and know that it’s part of the real world.
The temperature’s perfect, which doesn’t help. No sense of warmth or chill or wind to tell her there’s something outside her. The air is so still around her that it might as well not be there at all.
There’s something calming about it, though, looking down at the river winding through those wooded slopes. Something about being up high, safe on the viewing platform, and seeing how everything below them has become smaller.
It’s so soothing that Mae almost isn’t tempted to vandalise the pay-to-use telescopes.
She’ll resist the urge. Bea wouldn’t be impressed.
“This is pretty cool,” she says, instead.
Bea is looking out on the trees, somewhere close to smiling. “Yeah, it’s okay.”
Someone’s scratched Fuck. in small letters into the safety railing. The capitalisation and period make it look strangely formal. Mae doesn’t know why her mind would make up those details. But there’s a lot she doesn’t know about her own mind.
There’s some kind of bird of prey drifting below them, following the line of the river.
Mae still doesn’t feel like this road trip is real, exactly. But the scenery’s good to look at. Maybe that’s enough?
“If I’m here, I’m glad I’m here,” Mae says. “And if I’m not here... I guess I’m glad I think I’m here?”
Bea looks over at her. “You don’t really sound like you think you’re here.”
“Wow,” Mae says. “Way to ruin the moment.”
It’s that weird time when the sun is close to setting and the light is warm and soft and intense, like everything’s a fond memory instead of the moment you’re meant to be living in right now.
Maybe that’s it. This might be real; it might be a dream. Or maybe it’s a memory, old Mae Borowski looking back at her twenties from her rocking chair.
“Sorry,” Bea says.
Mae shakes her head. “Nah. Moments are there to be ruined.”
If that means she makes it long enough to get a sweet rocking chair, she’ll take it.