The fog is beautiful.
(Even now, Solomon is proud of it. He worked late every night in the lab for three months, to get the green working. It came out well; it's a lovely shade. Thematically appropriate. The timing was perfect, too, he's not sure where the Nightingale's been finding these people - or, okay, fine, the Philosopher's done his share of the organizing legwork - but the artist they found for this clearly knows his stuff. The butterflies were glorious. Solomon can't actually remember why it was butterflies, he thinks it was on purpose - there's something, Lucien dearly loves his historical references, but wow does the man like to run his mouth, and the politics part was never really Solomon's thing.)
The fog is safe to breathe. That was the first and most important criterion. It's not hurting anybody.
Unfortunately, what it is doing is cutting visibility to approximately six inches.
Solomon knows that there's a pillar two meters to his right, because three minutes ago he could see it fine.
He can't, now. He's pretty sure it would be a good idea to be standing there instead of here, but his legs don't seem to be taking instructions right now. That's...really embarrassing, mostly, he always imagined - he had pictured - he'd thought he wouldn't be a coward, is all, and it's an awfully awkward moment to be realizing he was wrong.
Solomon had also not been picturing the part where– he's not sure what happened, exactly, he couldn't see anything, because whoever it was who freaked out picked the exact moment when nobody could see anything, thanks to Solomon's (beautiful, thematically appropriate) fog, but something happened, he heard the thud and then the screaming and then the air got really cold and he's having the incredibly stupid thought, now, that it's wasted potential, they had an actual literal Frost Dancer coming to their meetings and somehow the ideas guys (Evangeline and Lucien, mostly) didn't think to ask him if he could pull off some thematically appropriate artistic shit with his whole ice magic thing, do it as a two-man act with the butterfly guy - it would've been incredible -
Solomon is pretty sure he should be getting down on the ground right about now. He's pretty sure that someone, somewhere, made a mistake here, and that all of this was a really bad idea, and if his mother ever finds out he was here she's going to lose her shit. That's also a stupid thought, it's not the part, it's not– the crowd is panicking, now, and at some point in the past Dr. Solomon Cartwright had the brilliant idea that it would be impressive to have the fog roll out all green and sparkly, glowing in ribbons when the Nightingale's voice hits the hit notes (and it was, it was everything he had ever imagined), but the crowd is panicking and the screaming is lighting up the fog in sparks and ripples and they can't find the exits, can they, and oh dear god why did they bring the wolves, what was Evangeline thinking, that was always going to be a disaster waiting to happen and the waiting is about to be over–
it's everything he imagined, though,
it's beautiful