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"In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself, in a dark wood, where the direct way was lost. It is a hard thing to speak of, how wild, harsh and impenetrable that wood was, so that thinking of it recreates the fear. It is scarcely less bitter than death: but, in order to tell of the good that I found there, I must tell of the other things I saw there."
— Dante Alighieri, opening to The Divine Comedy
It had been hours since they left the Woodsman at the mill, and Wirt was not enjoying this hike.
They were lost. There were no signs of civilization. And the forest was...
He shivered, eyes darting to each shadow under every tree. He wished that he had a flashlight. Part of him even longed for total darkness; the half-moon was casting a dim, sickly light that made everything look even creepier.
The leaves and twigs crackled under their feet. Branches clung to them like bony hands. Animals skittered around unseen, and when Wirt could see them, they somehow seemed more sinister than they would have during the daytime. He wasn't taking any chances after that dog.
Wirt winced when he thought about that. The whole mill had been destroyed. He had messed up—as usual. Even if it was really Greg's fault.
He sighed. He was tired and moody and depressed. Glancing around, he thought that their eerie surroundings reflected his dark mood.
Greg tried to strike up a conversation a few times, but Wirt was curt when he bothered to answer. Eventually, Greg entertained himself by repeatedly puffing out his cheeks and poking them to make farting noises. Wirt ignored him.
After a while, a pale, grayish glow overtook the cold whiteness of the moon. Now Wirt really started to worry. Was that morning? Their parents would be freaking out by now.
As they kept walking, the gray light slowly became brighter and sunnier. Dawn crept through the trees, and the shadows shrank. And at the same time, the colors began to show. The black and gray leaves were now a rainbow of orange and yellow and red and brown, all bathed in a golden light. The trees came into focus, and their spindly claws turned back into branches. Something scrambled through the underbrush, and when Wirt looked it seemed like nothing more frightening than a chipmunk.
"Huh," he murmured, and took a deep breath of the cool morning air. This place wasn't so scary. It was just the woods, after all. People camped out in them all the time. It wasn't like their town had wolves or bears to worry about. And it looked kind of pretty in the morning light. Autumn was Wirt's favorite season, but he couldn't remember the last time that he had stopped and noticed it like this.
He thought, vaguely, that he probably wouldn't be noticing it now, if they hadn't gotten lost. At the very least, he would have missed the sunrise. Sometimes, he mused, you have to get lost to find something important, or to find yourself, or...something.
Had he read that somewhere? If not, maybe he could work it into a poem. He smiled at the thought.
Then he pictured his mom and stepdad calling the police, and remembered the Woodsman's warning, and realized that they were probably still hours away from home.
He glanced around, anxiety dulling the beauty of the forest. "It's almost morning. We should have found a town by now. This is the way the Woodsman told us to go, right?"
Greg PFFTTed again, then exclaimed, "Have you been listening to anything I've been saying? For the last couple hours, I've been saying PFFTT PFFTT PFFTT!"
"Well, that settles it. I'm gonna walk up ten feet ahead of you."
He sped up, his thoughts about the scenery forgotten for the moment.