The inland path gives you both kinds of shine at once, which feels like a superpower that does not need a cape.

Over the water: white-blue coins that wander, sit, and lie. Sky in puddles. Maybe a fingernail flame over a bubble. Will-o’-the-wisp in the left column; marsh weather in the right.

In the wood: a stump with a green, low glow, loyal to the rot. Foxfire. Fungus threads eating dead alder and paying rent in light. No heat. No feet. No interest in leading you anywhere. Jonah whispers, “Corpse candle,” then looks cheated in a pleased way.

Jonah holds his hands up like a scale. “Okay. Two ghosts. Except not.”

“Two chemistries,” you say. “One story that tried to be both.”

Rain ticks the leaves. The scrapbook cottage is a yellow square. Aunt Mara’s kitchen is a darker square with a waiting table. A pea-sized crumb of bark is loose on the stump, still faintly lit, like a firefly that forgot to blink. Aunt Mara keeps a jar in the notebook’s back flap for “do not eat, do show later.”

You have enough to write. You also have a chance to carry a piece of the green night home without hurting the stump—pea-sized, not greedy.

Thunder practices in the west.