Somebody's whole address
Stone does not look like habitat. It is. Every crack and ledge out here is somebody's entire world, small enough to fit in your palm, and still worth everything to them.
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They call it unused land. You call it the garden. It is bigger than their maps admit, and it keeps living in places nobody has ever surveyed.
Stone does not look like habitat. It is. Every crack and ledge out here is somebody's entire world, small enough to fit in your palm, and still worth everything to them.
The dark takes your sight and hands you back creatures the daylight will never show you. A lit lantern buys some of that sight back, for as long as the oil holds out.
Cave mouths go further down than they look, and the garden kept living down there without anyone watching. If the Office never surveyed this deep, whatever you write down is the first record that exists.
Some mornings open clear and turn to rain by the afternoon. Snow comes when it wants to, and fog swallows the path home. Mosquitoes hang over the water, leaves come down in the autumn woods, and the caves breathe out a mist of their own.
What you carry inside does not stop being what it was. Something may not make it through the night, and you will not see it happen, only the aftermath. It is not cruelty. It is just what the garden does.
A spider riding your shoulder. A hound that finds the three things you walked straight past. A cat that adopted the cabin before it adopted you. Feed them, play with them, and do not forget them.
Some of them fight back. Some winters the firewood runs out. A death moth flickers out and revives you, and you have very few of those. When the last one goes, the save never opens again.