The tarn’s packed edge is a wet-black ring of honest snow, and you take it like a caretaker.

Safe edge. No center. Ice talks. You count the temperature drop from Priya’s afternoon number to the smug thermometer now. You name the pings. You name the boom in the hill if it comes: cryoseism, maybe; echo, maybe; not a door.

The notch is alive the way an ecosystem and a freeze are alive. Not a soul. A system.

A headlamp crawls the switchback—Priya’s, small and stubborn. Maybe Wen’s, bigger. Maybe Ellis’s, already beside you, trying not to step toward the zipper-crack like a person in a movie.

You can stay low and meet them with a report. You can name every “ghost” out loud as it happens, which is a kind of bravery that does not require rattling locks.

A drop from a spruce hits your hood with a tap that would have been a knocker at supper and is a tree now. You almost laugh. You keep the packed edge. Respect is the rail. Truth is the volume knob, not the mute button.