You can start a vowel by cracking the damper. You can stop it by seating the damper. You can start a legend by salting the porch, and you do not, because Thistle does not need a buffet.

Whole-cabin theory, said out loud to the stove: the building is a machine for turning weather and wildlife into stories. Pipe, logs, salt, quills, a brain that hates blanks. People bring the stories. The notch brings the cold.

You wipe bark-dust off your glove. It smells like wood and porcupine, which is a sentence you did not expect to need.

The table would like this in pencil. The quiet cabin would like a walk-through where you start and stop each noise on purpose.

You say the theory twice. Weather plus animals plus brains equal nights like this. Minus any one of them, the haunting thins. You cannot remove the cold. You can remove the rush to name it a miner.