Frank returned to the forest at daybreak, as promised. "I should have dressed warmer" he thought, especially this morning. As he approached his brothers cabin he paused to look out across the lake. "How many summers ago?" he wondered......Time went flat. His gaze anchored to that place, somewhere forgotten but now exposed. Reaching, beyond this distant mist, now downward below the still surface of his memory. Deeper yet, he recalled what was once found but set aside, filed away in the liquid darkness of his fear. At the murky bottom of that fear an answer lurked, a staircase with a door.....
The smell of smoke brought him back. The cabin was awake now, the windiows lit, grey spiral rising from the chimney.
He continued now, slowly, up the stairs and onto the porch. Looking back, toward the water, a single migratory bird flew above, it's path so neatly directed, perhaps by some ancient genetic program, through morning light, a primal quirk, headed south to sunny fields beyond Farmington, at least beyond here. "How convienient", Frank thought, as he turned, lifted the latch and entered the cabin....