Of course, in a novel, people’s hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through…

His chief form of entertainment was reading. The last moments he was in a cabin were usually spent scanning bookshelves and nightstands. The life inside a book always felt welcoming to Knight. It pressed no demands on him, while the world of actual human interactions was so complex. Conversations between people can move like tennis games, swift and unpredictable. There are constant subtle visual and verbal cues, there's innuendo, sarcasm, body language, tone. Everyone occasionally fumbles an encounter, a victim of social clumsiness. It's part of being human.To Knight, it all felt impossible. His engagement with the written word might have been the closest he could come to genuine human encounters. The stretch of days between thieving raids allowed him to tumble into the pages, and if he felt transported he could float in bookworld, undisturbed, for as long as he pleased.

It’d been a long time since they’d been together, but as close as they were physically, they’d never been so far apart in every other way.

I admire those believers who speak of such things with the same aplomb as if the'd just split a beer with God in the cabin next door.

The cabin will return to the soil when abandoned by its owner, yet in its simplicity it offers perfect protection against the seasonal cold without disfiguring the sheltering forest. With the yurt and the igloo, it figures among the handsomest human responses to environmental adversity.

Nothing unusual was noted during the voyage, in fact everything ran smoothly until Security alerted Biscay about the stiff in cabin 407. Nobody heard or saw anything suspicious. None of the passengers were missing or acting suspiciously. No airlock doors were opened or any transports allowed since their last stop four days prior. There were no notorious names on the passenger list, nor any unsavory persons among the ranks of his crew. In fact, the ship’s commander had never even seen a dead body in real – um, life before. And yet, almost magically, there it was.

It is good to know that out there, in a forest in the world, there is a cabin where something is possible...