Whispers from the Snowbound Cabin
The tundra stretched flat as a spilled sheet of glass, reflecting a sky that burned with aurora. A solitary cabin huddled against the wind, boards blistered by frost, smoke pinpricking the chimney but never quite releasing its secret. I had sought shelter from the white glare, a place to mend boots and mutter about the days that refused to end. When I first pressed my gloved hand to the door, it gave a tired sigh, as if the building remembered every traveler who never left.
Inside, the air was a weight, thick with pine resin and something else—something older than the trees, older than the storm. My lantern hissed, throwing gold over rough walls where animal pelts hung like a quiet audience. The door creaked shut on its own, and the snow outside began to mute, as if the world had exhaled and forgotten the breath.
“The cold is a rumor you tell yourself to stay warm,” the cabin seemed to say, its voice drawn from the walls. “Listen close, and you will hear who you were before you learned to endure.”
I lit a small fire, watching it fight the bite of the room. Shadows pooled in corners, then crawled forward in search of warmth, until a set of footsteps—barely human, almost animal—crossed the wooden floor. I told myself it was the wind. I told myself that cabins collect sounds like jars collect fireflies. But the whispers grew louder, stitching themselves into syllables I half-recognized, names I had forgotten to forget.
What the snow remembers
- The crunch of a boot that isn’t there, dusted in powdered frost.
- Breath that frost-laces into thin, white threads when you speak.
- A tapping at the window, rhythm like a heartbeat beneath ice.
- Footprints that vanish at the threshold, as if the ground remembers who belongs and who does not.
- A scent of smoke, cinnamon, and something metallic—perhaps the edge of fear.
By candlelight, the cabin’s interior grew to resemble a memory you could walk through with two hands on your chest. The whispers returned, softer now, a chorus of something patient and inexorable. When I finally slid the door open to glimpse the world again, the snow outside did not greet me with a white hug. Instead, it answered with a language of glistening eyes and a quiet warning: stay, and listen, for some cabins survive by feeding on the stories of those who stay too long.