Somewhere left, a fox cuts a seam through the bracken. Somewhere right, the river talks to itself in vowels you almost understand.
You walk for the sake of walking, each step a small refusal of the lit room, the list, the clock. The wind combs the grass into whispers. Your shadow — what shadow? You have loaned it back to the earth. nachttocht
Instead, you stand until your spine becomes a question mark, until the cold is a second skin, until the first herringbone of dawn stitches the east. Somewhere left, a fox cuts a seam through the bracken
At the ridge, you stop. The village below is a scatter of sugar cubes, each window a weak star. You do not go down. Not yet. nachttocht