Thistle does not walk you home. Thistle owns the porch corner and you are tolerated.

People at the trailhead see a waddle in the dusk and start the old sentence about someone in the walls. Then they see the quills. Then they see you, on packed snow, not in a hole, holding the notebook like a person with a poster in their future.

You make the poster with Ellis, who has surprisingly good block letters:

SOMEONE IN THE WALLS = THISTLE, PORCUPINE, PLEASE DO NOT SALT THE PORCH. Eyes shine (night mirror). Chew sounds like a person. Soup ghosts: rinse the boards.

Solano laminates it because she laminates what matters. Wen staples it under the STAY OUT sign. Priya finds Thistle’s quills in last year’s boot tray, which is so exactly this cabin that nobody even sighs.

The legend gets a sequel people laugh with. Kids still get a shiver at the grate at midnight—that is allowed—but the shiver has a name and a note about salt.

You write: walls = rodent-cousin + story + dark. This one likes bark.

THE END

What you learned: “someone in the walls” grows from real porcupines, dark cabins, and fear on lonely claims. Eyes shine because of a mirror in the eye, not lanterns of the dead. Sometimes the ghost wants you to stop serving soup on the porch.