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Description
It had been cold, but it wasn't any more. It wasn't rainy either. Just dry and still, the air hanging over us, refusing to budge. We breathed it in daily, hourly, as we all had to. It entered our lungs and exited and then the cycle would repeat, many times a day. Perhaps it would have been alright if that were all that happened. But there were also the cars.

There's not much to say about cars, yet somehow people often talk about them. Everyone has one, but no one actually likes them. They have to be maintained at great expense, regularly break down, get in each others way and when you stop driving them there's no where to leave them. No good if you're not in one either. It's very slow getting wherever you're going and there's always the danger that one of them might get you. Yet, everyone has them and drives them. Well, they breathe the air too. Only big, gulping breaths and then let it out in even bigger, chocking, dark breaths.

They say sun and cars is a bad combination. It's true, we once left some eggs in a car in the sun and when we found them the next day they had gone so rancid my little brother was puking for a good thirty minutes. But this was different. There was the stinky breath of the cars and then there was the sun and when you mixed it together it became smug.

“Smog.”
“What?”
“Smog, not smug.”
“What's smog?”
“Pollution in the air, partly from cars that becomes worse in the sun and conditions of stagnant air.”
“Smug then.”
“No.”

Anyway, it seemed the sun and the cars had breathed all the air and there was very little left for us. People were worried about this. They wrapped up in their coats and wore scarves over their mouths. I'm not sure why as scarves don't make air. They're not air filters either, or the things auntie Heather always buys, and that have air filters written in big letters over them, would have scarves in them. They don't. I opened one and it didn't, but I did get yelled at. People didn't yell about the air, just talked about it lots. It would have become boring to hear them talk if it hadn't become boring breathing it. The rasp, shallow gasps for air, followed by the piffle of energy you got from it, which meant you had to take yet more rasp, shallow gasps and that drained all the energy you had gained and then some. I wondered if the talking was using up more air in which case it would have been stupid, but I never saw them need to catch their breath when talking, just me and my mates running after a ball or having snowball fights. We started having “breathers”, where we'd call a truce and just breathe as much as we could. It didn't help much but it allowed the sweat to dry on us and make us so cold that then we wanted to run around, even out of breath. It was weird stuff, the smug.

“Smog.”
“Why are you interrupting me?”
“You're getting it wrong.”
“It's not wrong, it's how I saw it, that's how it was for me.”
“But it's not smug!”
“And for many of my mates as well, we talked, I heard them say some of these same things.”
“What, about smug?”
“Yeah.”

It was really weird stuff, because you thought you could see it. After all, it was hanging there, a fine mist that meant you couldn't see very far, making it hazy in the distance and sort of brown all around. But that could have been fog, you can see that too. This fog was special because it had the harmful things in it. The things that had been bad, but then with the sun went worse and now they were awful making many people sick. The sun is a bad influence on many things. Like those eggs, but also other food you leave out, not in a car. And then when we go outside and its sunny and it's just wild and you're having a great time, so that when your mom calls you in you really don't want to go back in so you say you'll come in but you don't because you're busy playing but also because you don't want to. Well, that's bad too, I get yelled at for that too. So it must be the sun. And it's so powerful that it lasts even after the sun has set and the stars come out and, even better, the moon, because then you can see better if someone is sneaking up on you and you can tag them first. That's really powerful if it can stay with you after it goes and that's because it gives us energy. They say the sun gives the stuff in the air too much energy and it both turns into other things and has little bits flying about hurting people. I can understand that too, because if a ball comes flying through the air and hits you that hurts and if a comet hit you that would hurt even more. Though the smug didn't look like it was flying about, it was just sitting there, so that's weird.

“Oh for the last time, it's called smog, smug means something else and cannot possibly be used instead of smog.”
“Do you want to hear the end of this story or not?!”
“Yes, but it's still smog.”

And we went to the mountain and had many adventures along the way and brought the wind back to the valley and saved everyone from the smug. The end.

“Fine. I won't correct you any more.”
“Too late.”

Description
It had been cold, but it wasn't any more. It wasn't rainy either. Just dry and still, the air hanging over us, refusing to budge. We breathed it in daily, hourly, as we all had to. It entered our lungs and exited and then the cycle would repeat, many times a day. Perhaps it would have been alright if that were all that happened. But there were also the cars.

There's not much to say about cars, yet somehow people often talk about them. Everyone has one, but no one actually likes them. They have to be maintained at great expense, regularly break down, get in each others way and when you stop driving them there's no where to leave them. No good if you're not in one either. It's very slow getting wherever you're going and there's always the danger that one of them might get you. Yet, everyone has them and drives them. Well, they breathe the air too. Only big, gulping breaths and then let it out in even bigger, chocking, dark breaths.

They say sun and cars is a bad combination. It's true, we once left some eggs in a car in the sun and when we found them the next day they had gone so rancid my little brother was puking for a good thirty minutes. But this was different. There was the stinky breath of the cars and then there was the sun and when you mixed it together it became smug.

“Smog.”
“What?”
“Smog, not smug.”
“What's smog?”
“Pollution in the air, partly from cars that becomes worse in the sun and conditions of stagnant air.”
“Smug then.”
“No.”

Anyway, it seemed the sun and the cars had breathed all the air and there was very little left for us. People were worried about this. They wrapped up in their coats and wore scarves over their mouths. I'm not sure why as scarves don't make air. They're not air filters either, or the things auntie Heather always buys, and that have air filters written in big letters over them, would have scarves in them. They don't. I opened one and it didn't, but I did get yelled at. People didn't yell about the air, just talked about it lots. It would have become boring to hear them talk if it hadn't become boring breathing it. The rasp, shallow gasps for air, followed by the piffle of energy you got from it, which meant you had to take yet more rasp, shallow gasps and that drained all the energy you had gained and then some. I wondered if the talking was using up more air in which case it would have been stupid, but I never saw them need to catch their breath when talking, just me and my mates running after a ball or having snowball fights. We started having “breathers”, where we'd call a truce and just breathe as much as we could. It didn't help much but it allowed the sweat to dry on us and make us so cold that then we wanted to run around, even out of breath. It was weird stuff, the smug.

“Smog.”
“Why are you interrupting me?”
“You're getting it wrong.”
“It's not wrong, it's how I saw it, that's how it was for me.”
“But it's not smug!”
“And for many of my mates as well, we talked, I heard them say some of these same things.”
“What, about smug?”
“Yeah.”

It was really weird stuff, because you thought you could see it. After all, it was hanging there, a fine mist that meant you couldn't see very far, making it hazy in the distance and sort of brown all around. But that could have been fog, you can see that too. This fog was special because it had the harmful things in it. The things that had been bad, but then with the sun went worse and now they were awful making many people sick. The sun is a bad influence on many things. Like those eggs, but also other food you leave out, not in a car. And then when we go outside and its sunny and it's just wild and you're having a great time, so that when your mom calls you in you really don't want to go back in so you say you'll come in but you don't because you're busy playing but also because you don't want to. Well, that's bad too, I get yelled at for that too. So it must be the sun. And it's so powerful that it lasts even after the sun has set and the stars come out and, even better, the moon, because then you can see better if someone is sneaking up on you and you can tag them first. That's really powerful if it can stay with you after it goes and that's because it gives us energy. They say the sun gives the stuff in the air too much energy and it both turns into other things and has little bits flying about hurting people. I can understand that too, because if a ball comes flying through the air and hits you that hurts and if a comet hit you that would hurt even more. Though the smug didn't look like it was flying about, it was just sitting there, so that's weird.

“Oh for the last time, it's called smog, smug means something else and cannot possibly be used instead of smog.”
“Do you want to hear the end of this story or not?!”
“Yes, but it's still smog.”

And we went to the mountain and had many adventures along the way and brought the wind back to the valley and saved everyone from the smug. The end.

“Fine. I won't correct you any more.”
“Too late.”