Winter arrived with a particular severity that year.
Not dangerous — not the kind of winter that closed roads and threatened harvests. Just cold, and grey, and long, in the way that some winters were: pressing inward, narrowing the world to firelight and close rooms and the company of whoever you happened to be sharing a house with.
I had spent nine winters afraid of being trapped. Proximity was vulnerability. Closed doors meant fewer exits. The cold months, in every life, had been months to endure.
This winter was different.
This winter I found, to my considerable surprise, that I did not want to be anywhere else.
