At the Bottom of the House

Once upon a time, in the heart of a beautiful hinterland village, the seasons always arrived gently. The spring sowed beauty, while the summer heat offered shade—only occasionally coaxing beads of sweat to fall shyly from the villagers' faces. The cold, too, was calming, giving the people a brief respite to enjoy the fruits of their hard work. Back then, the seasons were reluctant to trouble the villagers, arriving slowly, whistling through small lightning at the edge of the night to signal the coming change. Right beneath it lived a sweet girl full of warmth, despite her hands always being cold. Gazing hopefully, praying perhaps, that her life would be filled with beautiful memories.

However, those friendly seasons seemed to halt before the door of a large house now slowly decaying. Inside, the young girl had to count numbers that troubled her quite a bit—for her, it was a lot, far too much, so much that she recounted them on paper three times just to be sure she wasn't misreading the number of zeroes. For a moment, the girl let out a long sigh while rubbing her hands together; it was a piercingly cold winter. Her sigh even formed a thin puff of steam. Strange, she thought, winter doesn't usually play this cruelly.

Her thoughts seemed to echo in the house that was far too large to heat, making the atmosphere even more piercing. The sheer size of this house no longer guaranteed prosperity, because they were now too poor to repair it. And since childhood, she had learned that the cold wasn't something to be fought, but something to be befriended, like a sickly younger sibling whom you could never hate even when they exhausted you.

Then, the girl furrowed her brow slightly while twirling the ends of her brownish-black hair. The cold air bit into the reddish skin of her face, and instantly she rubbed her cheeks with both hands, muttering softly.

"Why does the world offer me a world that can be measured? Instead of a world that can be remembered."

Then, the girl fell back into contemplation. Twirling a pen that was almost out of ink because she constantly wore it down calculating numbers. To her, the world was nothing more than numbers, and she was disappointed by that fact. No, not because she felt burdened by all these numbers. But she was terrified that her beautiful memories would be replaced by the numbers popping up one by one.

The bills from the healers inside and outside the village were numbers. The remaining debts for household needs were numbers. The days Mother had left, according to almost all the healers, somehow felt like numbers—though no one dared write them down explicitly.

Even though all these things weighed on the girl's mind, there was one thing she remembered. Her mother warmed the girl's hands with her breath every morning, and every morning said the exact same thing: Sleep, little flame, let Mother keep watch. And the girl would smile in a half-awake state, celebrating the dreams she had just dreamt. The two of them would laugh, and the girl would go back to sleep with a small smile.

Then, one morning, her mother didn't wake up again. The clock on the wall kept ticking, but no one was breathing in that room anymore. And no one warmed the girl's hands anymore, and the large house became as cold as she had always feared. Not only was she now entirely alone, but that memory, in whatever number it was, would also disappear. The girl thought about that constantly, always.

So, when dusk was almost breaking and a woman in a hat came knocking—a woman whose face was as soothing as the afternoon, whose voice was like a blanket—the girl opened the door slowly; she had just been knitting a neighbor's clothes, for a wage, of course.

"I hear," the woman said, "you are good at keeping the cold company."

"I am not good at anything," the girl replied coldly.

"That is exactly the skill I mean," the woman said, and smiled. "I have a job for you, dear. A warm job. At the bottom of my house, there is a room, and in that room, there is a small flame, and that flame must not go out. Your only task is to guard it. Sit beside it, and love it, and do not let it sleep. In exchange, you will never be cold again, and your mother"—the woman touched the girl's cheek, and her hand was warm, incredibly warm—"your mother will be at peace where she is, because the debts she left behind will be erased, as if they never existed."

The girl fell silent for a moment. Thinking about all the trouble those numbers had caused. She remembered someone once promising the exact same thing, but that person had terrible breath and an unpleasant face. Flabs of fat hanging under his chin, on his arms, on his belly, and in every place one might not even think of; she was certain that person was a man of fat. The girl didn't understand why anyone would willingly trouble themselves to pay off numbers that even she found troublesome. But when she saw, once again, the heavy breathing of that fat person panting and perhaps... hot. She decided against accepting the offer and slammed her door shut.

That unknown, fat person pounded on her door violently and cursed her in a language she had never heard. But she ignored him and hoped the day would simply pass. Until other neighbors had to step in to chase the stranger away, until he was never seen again. The girl gained one thing she believed to this day: Never trust anyone who promises to erase numbers. The foundation she believed in was stronger than any memory, no matter how precious.

But now, it was slightly different. Very convincing, and the girl was captivated by the woman's appearance and words. She felt that what she was getting wasn't for free—she was working for her, guarding a flame whose purpose she didn't quite understand. It was a fair exchange, so she nodded slowly and immediately packed her necessities. Just the things needed for her new job. But she remembered something, and jogged toward the door.

"Give me some time; I have to finish this knitting. The buyer entrusted their numbers to me," the girl said softly, though slightly out of breath.

The woman seemed to weigh something in her mind, long enough that the atmosphere warmed slightly and the girl's breathing returned to normal.

"Alright," the woman in the hat replied enthusiastically. "Finish it, and I will pick you up tomorrow morning," she continued, then turned and waved slightly at the girl. Her steps were so graceful, so graceful it felt as if she were hovering above the ground. For a fleeting moment, the girl felt the weather growing colder, and she went back inside the house. Hoping the knitting would be finished overnight.

And morning finally broke on the eastern horizon. She woke up amidst tangles of yarn and the sweater she had worked on last night. Tangled threads hung from her fingers like the remnants of an unfinished dream. The girl had a very hard time falling asleep at first; those debts were numbers filling her mind that night. And also the strange woman who offered to erase the numbers with a flame, something she could barely even picture.

But before falling asleep, the girl had allowed herself to hope just a little—to believe in something other than her mother and numbers. And because of that small hope, she finally slept without nightmares.

Strangely, that morning felt warm. Not the spring warmth that usually sneaked in shyly through the window cracks. This warmth was silent. Clinging to the skin like the breath of someone standing far too close.

The girl opened her eyes slowly. There was no dew on the windowpane. No thin steam coming from her mouth. She sat in silence for a long time, staring at her own palms. Turning them slowly as if to confirm they were indeed hers. Then, unconsciously, she reached for the side of the bed that was usually empty and cold. But that morning, even the empty space felt warm.

Instantly, the girl's body tensed.

The old house usually creaked when morning arrived. Its wood always made small sounds like an old person groaning softly. But this morning, the house was too quiet. Too still. As if something were listening. Then, from the floor below, a soft knocking came from the direction of the front door. The knocking sounded quiet, like fingernails tapping on wet wood. And the girl was certain, the woman had arrived exactly as promised.

Frantically, the girl pulled herself from the mattress and straightened her clothes. She opened the window, which blew in an uncanny warmth, looked down, and realized the woman had been looking up all along with a gentle smile, sorrowful eyes, and a graceful swing of her arm as if waving. The girl gave a silent nod and slowly closed the window again.

The wooden door opened, revealing the girl standing stiffly with a heavy tote bag in her hand.

"Hi, dear. Are you ready?" the woman greeted briefly. Her smile was now wider, stretching across her face in a way that felt forced.

"I am ready, but let me deliver this knitting to my neighbor," the girl replied hastily, though without waiting for a reply from the woman. The girl turned right, passing a few monotonous houses next to hers. But the woman remained silent and followed her slowly, soundlessly from behind.

The girl's footsteps creaked, breaking the morning silence, clashing against the dewy ground that was beginning to harden. However, no matter how hard she strained her ears, there was not a single sound of footsteps following her. The woman in the hat moved like a shadow—floating, sweeping across the street without leaving a trace, bringing with her a warm aura that uncannily made the hair on the girl's neck stand up.

Upon arriving in front of her neighbor's dull, stained wooden door, the girl knocked softly. The door creaked open, revealing the wrinkled face of the neighbor, who seemed to carry the exhaustion of the remaining night. However, that look of exhaustion vanished instantly, replaced by dilated pupils and a breath that suddenly caught. The old woman's gaze was not directed at the girl, but locked straight through her shoulder.

"The knitting is finished, Ma'am. As I promised," the girl said, breaking the awkwardness, handing over the neatly folded wool.

The neighbor did not respond immediately. Her suddenly trembling hand slowly reached for the knitting, while her eyes remained wide, staring at the graceful figure behind the girl. The air on the porch slowly felt suffocating, as if the oxygen was slowly being sucked out of their surroundings. With stiff, extremely hurried movements, the neighbor slipped a few coins into the girl's cold palm.

"Take this," the neighbor whispered, her voice hoarse and sounding almost like a whimper. Her fingers gripped the girl's wrist tightly for a moment. "And go... never look back while you walk."

The door was slammed shut instantly. The sound of a series of iron bars being pulled from the inside echoed, as if locking away a terror to keep it from entering her house.

The girl froze, staring at the coins in her hand—the last numbers she received, which for some reason now felt entirely worthless. She swallowed hard, remembering her neighbor's warning, but her instinct forced her to turn her head slowly.

The woman in the hat was still there. Only, the distance was now much closer than before, standing right in front of her until the girl could smell a nauseatingly sweet aroma. That forced smile was still plastered perfectly on her face, not shifting a single millimeter since she was in front of the house.

"Are you done saying goodbye to your numbers, dear?" she asked softly.

Strangely, the woman's lips did not move at all. That blanket-like voice no longer floated in the air, but echoed directly, heavy and suffocating, inside the girl's head.

With the girl now fully realizing that she was dealing with something far beyond human reason, which way would the woman in the hat lead her now?

The girl felt she had never walked this far. Her entire life, the map of her world was only the path to the market, the dead fields, and the frozen river. Now her tiny body was forced to drag a bag that felt increasingly heavy, in stark contrast to the woman in front of her. That figure stepped effortlessly, her heavy, layered clothes seeming to... flutter, as if she had her own wind.

Occasionally, the woman hummed. An uncanny melody the girl had never heard before. She also began to babble about how hard it was to find a girl like her—and what made the girl's stomach churn again was that the babbling voice still echoed softly inside her head, while viewed from behind, the woman's shoulders and posture remained motionless.

"I am sure you have met a fat man before," she said softly, echoing once again in the girl's ears.

The girl's steps faltered. Her shoes scraped softly against the frozen ground. Her stomach churned, reawakening the memory of the heavy, hot breath and the gaze from the man of fat the other day. Fear crept slowly up the back of her neck.

The woman stopped too, though her back remained turned to the girl. The wind instantly died, leaving a chest-crushing silence.

"His gaze was dirty and hungry, wasn't it?" the voice flowed softly again inside the girl's skull, smooth yet feeling as if it were flaying her. "Looking at you as if you were a piece of helpless fresh meat... or perhaps, an empty vessel he was free to fill with his rot. Whether he was merely a wretched man controlled by his feral lust, or something far more ancient and hungrier than that... his intentions were always equally vile."

The girl gripped her bag straps tightly until her knuckles turned white. The cold air she usually befriended now made her shiver. She began to realize that all this time, she hadn't just been poor; she was also being stalked, studied like lost prey.

"But it's only natural that many prey on you, dear," the echoing voice continued, its tone now softening, resembling the fake sympathy of someone admiring fragile porcelain. "You radiate a despair that is so pure. A young girl with hands that are always freezing, insisting on protecting memories that are slowly cracking. Something very appetizing to snatch away."

The girl swallowed the sharp lump in her throat. Her instinct screamed to drop her bag and run back to the village, but her feet felt as if they had taken root in the warm soil beneath her soles.

"But he was too noisy. Too vulgar," a small laugh followed, echoing inside the girl's head without vibrating the hat-wearing woman's shoulders at all. "I know you are not naive. You have a boundary regarding which despair you are willing to accept. That is why I didn't bother chasing that fatty creature away that day. Because from the start... I firmly believed, in the end, you would still come with me."

The woman finally turned around slowly. The shadow from the brim of her hat covered half her face, leaving a curved smile that now looked strained and far too wide—waiting for the girl to step forward and break the terrifying silence.

Without saying anything else, the woman raised one hand clad in a knitted glove, pointing forward. The girl swallowed the sharp lump in her throat, then gathered the courage to follow the direction of that index finger.

Her eyes slowly widened; her breath seemed forcefully pulled from her lungs.

The thick fog that had been obscuring their vision slowly parted, as if terrified by the existence of the woman's finger. Before them, the earth no longer lay flat. The map of the world the girl had known ended at this road. The ground ahead split to form a giant, perfectly circular ravine or pit—as if the world had a hole because something massive had just been plucked from there.

And at the bottom of that incredibly deep ravine, there was no snow. No frozen ice. There was only a majestic, looming structure made of pitch-black wood, distorted like a stilt house built upside down. The house stood silently in the middle of a sea of warm, slowly pulsating fog, waiting for its new occupant.

"Do you remember I promised a room at the bottom of my house?" the woman whispered. This time, the voice actually came from her own lips, breaking the absolute silence at the edge of that ravine. "Let us go down and meet your flame."

So the girl followed her down the stairs to the bottom of the house, so long and seemingly endless. The girl stumbled more and more, growing exhausted as she had to descend the stairs carrying a heavy bag. The woman glanced slightly to the right and muttered in a language the girl still couldn't understand. In an instant, her luggage felt light, as if she wasn't carrying anything. The girl still couldn't believe it and checked the contents of her bag. Which turned out to be completely intact, not missing a single thing; strangely, she was no longer surprised by the bizarre things before her. Deep in her heart, she believed that the one with her was not human.

The stone stairs stretched far too long. Far longer than a depth human logic could grasp, plunging through the fog until she began to doubt whether this ravine truly had a bottom.

"When will these stairs end?" the girl asked with an innocent, panting tone.

"Until you are ready, dear... oh, until you are ready," the woman replied, laughing slightly.

Time melted and rotted on those steps. The girl didn't know if they had been descending for hours, days, or just the span of one long breath.

At first, the girl's old habits took over. In silence, she began counting the steps in her head. A hundred and one, a hundred and two, fifteen hundred, who knows how many thousands. Rooted in her instinct, which was always faced with debts and measurable days. Every time she added a new number, the warm fog below them felt thicker, and the bottom of the ravine seemed to keep moving further away, mocking her efforts.

Ahead of her, the woman in the hat kept walking soundlessly, occasionally humming a tune that now sounded like the smoothed howling of the wind. Every beat of that hum seemed to strip a number from the girl's head. The more the girl tried to remember the amount of her mother's debt, the healers' bills, or the remaining coins in her hand—everything slowly blurred. Turning to ash.

Then, a realization struck the girl's chest, as cold as ice yet as clear as crystal.

"Until you are ready..."

Those words echoed again. As long as she kept counting steps, as long as she used numbers as the anchor of her rationality, these stairs would never touch the bottom. This world was not a world that could be measured. This was a world where memories and emotions were the sole currency.

So, taking a long, trembling breath, the girl stopped counting. She forced her head to discard the remaining coins, drown the rows of her mother's debts, and hold on to only one thing: the memory of her mother's warm breath on her hands every morning. She no longer cared which step she was on. She just walked, drowning in pure memory.

Right when the last number faded from her mind, the tip of her shoe hit something solid with a dull thud. No longer wooden planks, but black stone tiles gleaming with dew.

The girl opened her eyes wide. The stairs had ended.

They stood at the bottom of the ravine. The inverted stilt house structure now loomed right in front of her, pressing against the ceiling of fog with its dense and absolute aura. The tip of its roof was driven into the earth, while its foundation—which should have been on the ground—instead gripped the emptiness above. At the very bottom of that strange house was a carved oak door that looked centuries old.

The woman in the hat stepped to the side, no longer blocking the path. The girl turned and noticed a horrifying change. The forced smile that had stretched across the woman's face was now completely gone. Her face was blank, expressionless, lifeless. Her sorrowful gaze was now just two dark holes staring straight through the girl's soul, as if the essence that had been pretending to be human had now reverted to its apathetic, true form.

The oak door opened slowly without a sound, exhaling air that smelled like old books, frankincense, and something sweet yet charred. In the pitch-black darkness of the room, a few dozen paces inside, there was a beam of golden light pulsating weakly. Bright and dim. Bright and dim. Breathing.

"Go in," the woman's voice now sounded like thousands of dry leaves rustling against each other, no longer echoing in the girl's head, but whispering right in her ear. "Your flame is waiting for you. Keep it company. And remember..."

The woman leaned in slightly, her flat face now just a handspan away from the girl's.

"...do not let it sleep."

And with trembling steps, the girl entered the room. Behind the door of the windowless, soundless room, there was nothing but a small flame on a tiny pedestal in the center of the room.

"Why is it so quiet?" the girl asked, because in that room she could hear her own blood traveling, a soft rush like someone humming in the distance.

"So the flame is not disturbed," said the woman in the hat. "And so you never feel alone. Listen—the house is whispering to you, so you have a friend." She pointed to the flame. "As long as you love it, it will burn. Every time you love it, a little of your warmth transfers to it. That is love, dear. Love is always like that."

Then the woman stepped out. The wooden door closed without a sound. The girl now sat alone beside her small flame, staring at the dimly pulsating glow. And for the first time since her mother didn't wake up—deep within the crisscrossing paths of her confusion and fear—the girl felt useful.

The first winter arrived gently.

The girl didn't see it coming—there were no windows—but she felt it from the flame, which dimmed a little, just a fingernail's worth, as if sleepy. Sleep, little flame, the girl almost said, then remembered that was exactly what must not happen. So she inverted her mother's words. "Don't sleep, little flame," she whispered. "Let me keep watch." And she leaned in, loving that flame as hard as she could, and the flame grew bright again.

That morning—the girl called it morning, though there was no morning at the bottom of the house—she just felt that right after she woke up from sleep, it was morning. Her hands were colder than usual. But she didn't mind. She was used to befriending the cold. And didn't the woman in the hat say she would never be cold again? Surely she meant later. Surely the warmth would come later, after she proved herself, just as all good things always come later.

Strangely, her body seemed to understand that she was now in a world that no longer needed ordinary things. Days or perhaps weeks passed—she didn't know for sure—her stomach never whined to be filled. Her throat no longer demanded water. Even the urge to relieve herself simply evaporated. In that windowless room, she no longer felt entirely human; it was as if she were slowly turning into a lump of feeling whose only task was to sit, breathe, and guard.

The only human thing that occasionally came to greet her was an incredibly heavy drowsiness. At first, the girl was terrified. She squeezed her fingers tightly, bit her lip, and kept glaring at the flame. Let me keep watch, she whispered to herself, afraid that if she dozed off even for a second, the flame would die too. However, the silence of the room was too thick, stroking her head like an irresistible lullaby. In the end, she always surrendered. Her body slumped to the cold floor, and she fell into a dreamless sleep.

Then, every time she woke up from her long slumber, something had always changed in the corner of the room. Objects appeared silently, as if the room birthed them when she closed her eyes. Sometimes a cup of water or a piece of hard biscuit that strangely made her stomach feel full for days. But what appeared most often were stacks of old books with dull covers.

The girl had nothing else to do, so she read. The books contained strange tales from places she didn't know, yet their loneliness felt so close. She read about a little girl who kept swinging alone in a dead playground, waiting for a figure she thought was a friend when it was actually a monster. On another page, she found a story about a gloomy flower shop where someone arranged grief on paper. And there was also a story that made her ponder for a long time; about a desperate man digging empty graves near a cluster of blue flowers, searching for his lost wife.

Even on one slightly torn page, she found a description of a flabby, fat creature that wandered preying on human despair—making the girl shudder softly, remembering the heavy breath behind her door back then.

Besides that, sometimes those books contained stories or perhaps histories from a world she had never known. There were writings about eyeless creatures that ate the echoes of voices, about a civilization built upon the eyelids of a sleeping giant, and about ancient rituals where a human's shadow could be flayed. Reading those strange books became her new routine, distracting her mind from the absolute silence pressing against the stone walls. The dark stories inside those dusty pages somehow felt like they validated her sorrow, as if whispering to her that the world up there was indeed too broken to live in.

And every time she finished reading, she would return to her routine. Leaning in, loving the flame in front of her until it grew bright again, then pressing her hands together and starting to count to ensure she still existed.

She counted, to keep herself company. She counted not the hours, because there were no hours, but how many things she still remembered from up there. Her mother's face. The smell of rain on soil. The taste of salt. The name of the river near her house. She kept them like one keeps stars, and said to herself: as long as I can still count them, I am still me.

The third winter arrived without warning.

This time the flame did not dim a fingernail's worth, but almost half, and the girl had to lean in closer, had to love harder, had to give more. She gave the flame the name of the river near her house, because she thought maybe the flame would like having a name. When the flame grew bright again, the girl realized she could no longer remember the name of that river. She had given it. That was what giving meant.

It's okay, she told herself. I still remember Mother's face. I still remember the smell of rain. I still have my stars. I still remember many things.

But deep in the chambers of her heart, there was an aching longing for the outside world. And she didn't know how long she had to keep loving something whose true form she didn't even know. Something bizarre, something horrifying.

But strangely, I love it more and more, the girl thought, staring at the golden glow with eyes that were slowly dimming. And I am not willing to leave it.

Suddenly, after who knows how long. The door opened once, in that third winter. It wasn't the woman in the hat, just her voice, coming down from the top of the long stairs.

"You are guarding it well, dear," the voice said.

"How much longer?" the girl asked. Her voice sounded foreign, too loud in a room that ate sound.

A brief silence. A silence too long for such a simple question. "Until someone replaces you," the voice said, very softly, as soft as a blanket. "That is how it works. Your mother guarded a flame once too, did you know? Every guardian may go up, may go home, may rest—but only after she finds someone whose hands are cold enough, and whose heart is loving enough, to come down and replace her."

The girl fell silent. Her mother who warmed her hands with her breath every morning. Her mother whose hands, if the girl were honest with herself, were always colder than anyone's hands she had ever touched.

"How," the girl asked quietly, "do you find that person?"

"You tell them a fairy tale," the voice said. "A beautiful fairy tale, about a small flame that must be guarded, and the warmth that awaits, and a mother who never leaves. Tell it softly. They always believe it, as long as you tell it softly."

Then the door closed, and the girl was alone again with her flame, and for the first time she noticed something she should have noticed a long time ago: that the small flame, if she brought her face close enough, was not like fire.

It was beating.

The winter that never ends.

The girl—though it is hard to call her a girl now, because time at the bottom of the house does not age the body but erodes something much deeper—she had given the flame the smell of rain, the taste of salt, and everything she remembered. Until finally, in a winter whose length she could no longer calculate, her mother's face. She gave it because the flame was almost out and there was nothing left to give, and when the flame grew bright again she tried to remember who she had just sacrificed, and couldn't.

She brought her face to the flame, as close as she could. And inside that small, beating flame, she saw a face.

Her own face. Young, with hands that could still feel the cold, on the day when a woman in a hat knocked on her door and said, I hear you are good at keeping the cold company. The flame was not something she guarded. The flame was her—the final ember of a girl who was extinguishing, very slowly, slower than any nature intended, because there was a consciousness clinging to her refusing, out of love, because it is always out of love, to let her go.

There was no other flame. There was no other flame she had ever guarded but her own soul, which she kept burning not for the sake of living but for the sake of guarding—a task that consumed the exact thing she used to guard it. Every time she loved it, a little of her warmth transferred. That is love. Love is always like that.

And her mother—whose hands were always cold, who gave her breath every morning, who one morning did not wake up—her mother never left. Her mother simply succeeded. Her mother simply found someone whose hands were cold enough and whose heart was loving enough, and told her a fairy tale softly, and went up the long stairs, and rested finally, finally, after who knows how many countless winters.

Sleep, little flame, let Mother keep watch.

There is no Mother. "Mother" is the name given to whoever is guarding the flame. One day that name would be her name. And she sank.

She no longer remembered who she was, whose face was behind that glowing light, or what task exactly bound her there. She had completely surrendered everything just so the flame would keep breathing. Now, she simply sat like a statue. Her eyes stared blankly, not blinking a single time, not recognizing anything. The mountain of books piling up into the thousands or millions in the corner of the room was now just a mute landscape to her. Let alone remembering their contents; even just to spell and read... she no longer knew how.

Suddenly, the oak door creaked, breaking the silence that had pooled for who knows how many eons. The woman in the hat returned. Her forced smile was gone, leaving a pair of eyes that were sorrowful and full of grief.

"Finally you have nothing left, dear... forgive me," she whispered hoarsely. "But that is your task."

The woman crouched down, reached out her hand, and gently stroked the hair of the silently sitting girl. The girl had forgotten the woman before her. She had forgotten everything. However, right beneath the stroke of that hand, a flash of ancient longing and a foreign warmth suddenly crept into her chest.

And without knowing what sorrow was, without remembering how to grieve, a single tear fell down her freezing cheek.

"I will return you upstairs. I give you a final task: live your life well from now on. Rest, and I will tell you a final fairy tale so you will always remember," the woman said once again, and thus the girl fell asleep to the final fairy tale of the woman in the hat.

So it goes like this, my child. This is how the fairy tale ends, and listen carefully, because this is the important part.

Once upon a time lived a girl whose hands were always cold, and she was given a beautiful task: to guard a small flame so that spring would remain in the house. And she guarded it faithfully, with all her love, for years longer than you could count—until one day the door at the top of the stairs opened, and down came a child with cold hands, and a loving heart, and debts she desperately wanted to erase.

Look at your hands, dear. So cold. Come here, sit beside me, close to this small flame.

Listen to how it beats.

Let me tell you how warm it will be later.