VENKE: We’ve lost the others.
TERESE: Yes. When did we last see them?
VENKE: I don’t remember. Last night?
TERESE: We’ll have to find them again, I suppose.
For an entire day, TERESE and VENKE walk through the forest, from when the sun is still rising till it’s evening again. They keep moving and are calm, not distressed or at a loss for what to do. At first the landscape continues to change, as if they were crossing continents and wandering for months, and the forest opens and closes, becomes big mountains and narrow valleys and then is suddenly completely flat, with red sandy mountains in the distance. Then the forest stabilises in the form of a Norwegian spruce forest, but the images change. We see an increasing number of landscape close-ups. Buzzing insects fly in and out of hollows in tree trunks above the girls, and farther up, birds float with extended wings and limp thin feet. Even farther up you can make out the sky, the moon and the stars, sometimes just a little patch, sometimes a great sea of them.
TERESE and VENKE are sweaty and dirty and sleepy, they wipe their foreheads, panting,
but at the same time the mood becomes more erotically charged.
They snort and moan,
touch different kinds of trees as they walk,
pick berries and mushrooms that they eat, and drink water from streams,
stick their fingers through grass and into openings in tree trunks,
dig out and chew bark and resin,
they see Roosevelt elk and roes cross marshes,
bats flying across the sky,
blue hares and red foxes running across the path.
Coyotes laugh, and wolves howl.
The girls begin to communicate with the animals and with nature,
as if they’ve eaten toadstools and begun to hallucinate.
They call for the hare and the fox,
they lie down in moss and lichen and let the wolf lick their faces,
they roll in plants, red, green, gold, yellow,
they disappear more and more into the landscape
and return like breathing, or like a children’s game
At times they vanish from sight, and we return to a few images of the forest, without VENKE and TERESE. We see the piss dry on the earth,
the blood dry on the flowers
something black trickling onto the red
black blood mixing with the red
All colours slowly fade to black, in the way everything turns black and disappears when the sun sets.
Another day begins.
VENKE continues to walk through the forest; TERESE is heard behind her. Close-ups.
Is it the same day, or the next day?
Suddenly new steps are heard, and VENKE crashes into someone else, an unfamiliar person, ŚMIERĆ. We see the collision in closeups, it’s embarrassing and weird, and they nudge a lot of places on each other’s bodies: hand against hip, hip against hip, belly against breasts, cheek against cheek.
VENKE and ŚMIERĆ both end up on the ground. TERESE bends over and puts her hand on VENKE.
TERESE: Are you OK?
VENKE (rubs hand on knee): Yeah.
TERESE and VENKE look at ŚMIERĆ, who is dressed entirely in black, with a tattered leather jacket, leather trousers, spikes on his arms and corpse paint on his face, looking a little worn out.
TERESE: Hi, are you OK?
ŚMIERĆ: Nie rozumiem, co mówisz.
TERESE: Oh, sorry … English? Are you okay?
ŚMIERĆ: (very broken): Ah! Yes, okay.
VENKE: What are you doing out here?
ŚMIERĆ: Oh … um … photo shoot.
VENKE: Photo shoot?
ŚMIERĆ gesticulates to signal air guitar riffs and bad growling.
ŚMIERĆ: Photo shoot with, you know, Norway forest. Black metal.
VENKE: Black metal band! Where is your photo shoot?
ŚMIERĆ: Um … I … up this way … no, that way … no … don’t know. I am … lost.
VENKE: Oh.
ŚMIERĆ: Yes.
TERESE looks at ŚMIERĆ, who shrugs, and then looks at VENKE. She wipes a little corpse paint from her cheek that has rubbed off on her from ŚMIERĆ.
TERESE: You had a little …
The three of them continue through the forest landscape, which now appears to be rooted in a Southern hilly marshland, somewhere within that magical triangle of Southern villages, Arendal, Froland and Grimstad. Dark spruce, ponds, and blueberry heather surround the hikers. TERESE and VENKE hike competently, reconnoitring at the clearings and on top of hills, stopping ŚMIERĆ when they sense a moose or a fox or hear other noises. ŚMIERĆ follows them; he’s more bewildered and wearing a spikey jacket and belt and boots that aren’t suited for hiking. He gradually smudges his makeup all over his face and breathes deeply. Sometimes he hums a little to himself, other times he just looks desperate.
During a break the three of them stop. ŚMIERĆ is whirling around, as if he’s a little anxious, looking for ticks or insects before he sits down on a stump. Brushes ants from his shoe.
TERESE: (to Venke, whispering faintly, but excitedly): He’s in a black metal band!
VENKE: Isn’t that sort of 1991, though?
In some frames we no longer see the people, we just wobble through the forest, seeing it from the people’s perspective. Gradually the sight line is lowered, with the canopies higher and higher up in the sky, until we see from the perspective of a rat.
The music over this hiking scene starts as a standard atmospheric black metal intro, with synths and maybe a gong, that extends over time, never becoming a song. The forest swirls past as the volume gradually increases and the drone sounds are slightly displaced and disrupted, as if we’ve entered a zone where electrical equipment doesn’t work, or we’re on a Skype call with a poor connection. The disruptions and the dissonances of the music shift over to the forest itself; it begins to flicker and grow more and more pixelated. VENKE and TERESE look around; they notice it, too. For a long time, VENKE stares right at us, has she glimpsed something? Then it’s peaceful and quiet again. A little darker, but otherwise unchanged.
The three of them continue on their hike. ŚMIERĆ starts to look tired, sweaty and scared. The girls take his tote bag, decorated with an upside-down pentagram, and take turns carrying it. They don’t look tired, but perhaps seem more detached,
