As he stumbled after Logan through the forest, Atlas entered a fugue state, his mind and body one entity, the pain and fatigue a new normal. His shoes were worse than useless, full of water, causing him to slip and slide, but his feet were too city-slicker-soft to go bare. As he picked his way over the springy earth so different than unforgiving asphalt, his glance bounced from fern, to sorrel, to ruffled redwood bark, in a rhythm that was soothing, a kind of song, a forest orchestration. The sweet-spicy scents, the burbling creeks, the shift of feathered shadow, and the darting of animals replaced all thought. He felt an order, a whole, a consciousness as if the forest itself was a mind. It contained a splash of the random, so that things repeated, but never in the same way. His former li
