Cocoa is a speech.

Ellis’s hands wrap the mug like it might run away. Yours do too. Ranger Wen, or Priya’s voice on the radio, or both: “Knockers don’t kidnap. Cold and holes do.”

You are on packed snow. The grate is a rectangle that you did not enter. Your pride is sore. Your body is only cold.

“You rattled your own echo,” Wen says, not unkind. “Now you know the mechanism the expensive way. Next time clap once, count, walk.”

The legend version still wants a seat: why miners told it. The notebook wants a seat before the feeling melts.

The cocoa writes a heat line down your chest. Embarrassment writes a heat line on your ears. Both will cool. The briefing about names is still available; so is the notebook. You choose like a person who has already used up one mistake and does not need a matching set.