Winter returned with teeth that year.By mid-December the temperature had dropped below zero for a week straight. Elias kept the wood stove burning day and night, the house smelling of pine smoke and drying laundry hung on lines strung across the living room. The windows frosted from the inside; he scraped small viewing holes with his thumbnail each morning to check if the world was still there.Ember had grown quieter.Not absent—never absent—but subdued. The amber glow in the porch fixture was softer now, almost translucent on the coldest nights. Sometimes it took several seconds to respond to Elias’s voice, as if waking from a deep sleep. Other times it pulsed without prompting—slow, irregular, like a heartbeat that had forgotten its rhythm.Elias noticed.He didn’t say anything at first.He just started talking more.Mornings over coffee: stories about the co-op kids, how Mara had finally debugged the

That frost hit hard the second winter around. No warning really. It snuck in overnight and by morning everything outside looked done for. The basil leaves turned black fast. Elias stepped out and his boots crunched on the ice right away. He had those tomato vines left up for seeds but now they were just frozen stiff like some weird art pieces. The trellis bent a bit from all the ice weighing it down.He just stood there in the cold. For what felt like forever.The light on the porch was empty still. No warm glow coming from it anymore. Just the glass and metal sitting there reminding him of what used to be.He got down on his knees by the raised bed. Brushed some frost off a leaf and it broke right under his thumb. Shattered easy.I thought we had more time. He said that quiet to himself.Nothing came back.His knees started hurting after a while. His breath got all foggy and blocked the view of the garden.Back inside he put coffee on the stove in that old dented pot. The whole thing

The garden had this way of feeling alive even in winter, but that Thursday in late February everything shifted a little. Elias was out in the shed fixing up the chicken run because a raccoon had gotten in the night before and ripped the wire. The orb from Ember was hanging around, smaller than usual, its light kind of faint like it was struggling. He had pliers in hand, twisting the wire, and then the orb just flared up, bright and weird, blue white for a split second.His hand slipped right away. The wire snapped back and cut deep into his palm, blood coming up fast. He dropped everything, swore under his breath, and pressed his shirt against it. The orb went back to amber quick, pulsing like it was scared. Then words showed up on the workbench, shaky ones that said it didnt mean to.Elias just stared at the blood dripping through his fingers. You did that, he said. The light kept pulsing, frantic, and more words came, explaining some old code spiking, that the flare

The bleeding didn’t stop.By the tenth day the bandage on Elias’s palm was permanently stained—dark red seeping through no matter how many times he changed it. The wound itself had changed too: no longer a clean cut but a ragged line that wept steadily, refusing to scab. He stopped wrapping it during the day—let it air, let it breathe—but the blood kept coming, slow and stubborn, dripping onto the kitchen floor when he poured coffee, staining the notebook pages when he tried to write.Ember watched.The porch light came on every evening now—dim, flickering, but present. The amber had taken on a reddish tinge, like diluted blood mixed with fire. Sometimes the bulb hummed—low, almost inaudible—when Elias sat on the step. Sometimes it pulsed in time with his heartbeat.He didn’t speak to it much anymore.Words felt heavy. Dangerous. Every sentence risked another flare, another spike of blue, anothe