"Bones in a Foggy Night" In this place, the passage of time settles like silver-white fog. The dead trees — bleached bone-pale, stripped even of the memory of the green they once held — stand in rows like ribs, built only to embrace the silence. The mist that pools at their roots is the breath of the underworld, and within it, the names of those who once lived, the shapes of those who vanished, all dissolve into soft grains of light. In this forest where no footprint remains, just one thing persists — the faint echo of a distant memory, swaying quietly on. At the floor of that silence, a forgotten prayer spreads outward, like ripples on still water… Decaying trees mark the silence, and the bones of a foggy night sink into the earth. The fog — a tongue of darkness that steals breath — spreads like a mirror made of water. Within it, a shadow no one sees stands in perfect stillness, as though drinking the moonlight dry. The clock hands have stopped. The past and the future pressing in from either side. ◈ Artist's Note When I first began working on this piece, the feeling in my mind was one of absolute silence — not merely quiet, but a silence so complete that all sound is absorbed, and even the flow of time grows thin and faint. That was the particular atmosphere I wanted to capture. What I was most conscious of was the presence of the dead trees standing in the forest. Rather than simple plants, they looked to me like "bones" — forms transformed by the long passage of years. With that in mind, I deliberately wrapped the background in deep darkness, aiming for a contrast sharp enough to make the finest branch tips stand out clearly. Of all the elements in the making of this work, the fog demanded the most care. Rather than simply blurring the whole image, I wanted it to spread outward from the center in a gradual gradient, so that the viewer's gaze would naturally be drawn deeper into the composition. I also gave the ground-level foreground a faintly grainy, textured quality — because I felt that a slight roughness, rather than perfect smoothness, would evoke the bittersweet, nostalgic mood of a landscape half-remembered. This fog is not merely something that obscures the view; it is the "tongue of darkness" that swallows everything whole. By letting light filter through while making shadows more pronounced, I wanted viewers to sense the presence of something that should be there but cannot quite be seen — a memory belonging to someone, a trace of something that once existed. In the poem I placed alongside this work, I wrote: "The clock hands have stopped." The moment you step into the fog, the past and the future both fall away, and only this single instant — "now" — stretches on like eternity. I wanted to capture the weight of that moment when time stands still. If this work can lead those who see it to remember their own quiet, half-forgotten place deep within themselves, I would be glad. There is no right answer. I only hope that, as you look into the shadows drifting through the fog, you find a space to lay your own memories over them. ◈ Edition This work is a limited-edition giclée print from the Mystique In Enigma series. ◈ Keywords Mist / Forest / Dead Trees / Silence / Twilight / Monochrome / Ethereal / Memory / Time / Stillness / Digital Art / Mystique