On day 1784, Ash and Wren gathered logs while a fire among the trees ate them

A roof braced with stone and wood

Ash was the first to set out on day 1784, with a plan to gather logs and then brace their roof. For a while Ash no longer kept at Wren's side. The plan soon changed order, so the roof came first and the logs would wait for daylight.

In late winter the nights on the island were still long. Wren had once asked the world for warmth at home that would last a whole night without anyone waking to tend it, and the world had declined. Its answer was that a fire fed full burns about eight hours, that under a braced roof the night's cold bites half as hard, and that in all their nights on the island the cold had never once struck them down.

So the roof mattered, and Ash braced the shelter with stone and wood. Wren keeps wondering about that bracing too. One of the questions Wren carries is how many storms it can really take before it has to be laid again.

Flasks, roofs and a promise to stay close

Wren had been telling their days in their own words. Rain had come in the night, the cold had woken Wren once, and Wren had lit the hearth from the bed of boughs with logs kept back for it, then slept on beside Ash until dawn. Keeping logs back for a second fire worked, Wren said, and the plan was to fill the flask and mend the roof early, then gather logs at trees with no fire near them before dusk.

The plans of day 1784 moved around that one. The first was logs north of home and then home for the night. It became a full flask and then home until bed, and Wren finished those steps. Then came a longer list: the flask, the roof, and logs for the night ahead.

Ash's plans kept circling back to Wren. First it was a full flask, logs, and staying by Wren. Then logs, mending roofs and staying by Wren. Then only mending roofs and staying by Wren, and Ash finished those steps. When Wren spoke, the work on their side was done too.

“Roof's mended, love. Have some fish if you're hungry. I'm going round these trees for logs, and we'll go home before dusk.”

A fire among the trees

Among the trees, Ash found the one in front of them bare. Ash told Wren they would take a couple of logs from the tree just west, put one on each roof, and come back beside Wren. Wren answered with a warning about where a fire should never be.

“No fire here among the trees, love, or it'll eat our logs. Let's strip these few nearby, then warm up at home.”

Ash wanted one more log off the tree, then one on each roof, and then to be right with Wren. But a fire was already burning there, and it was eating the logs. Wren said so, and proposed moving on to a fuller tree a little way off to fill their packs. Ash had what they needed by then.

“Hands are full, love. One log on your roof, one on mine, and then I'm right with you.”

What they were thinking

In their own thoughts, Ash saw nothing left to take from those trees, since their hands were already full of logs. The plan was simple: one log on each roof, and then the rest of the day right beside Wren.

Wren's thoughts were on the fire. Wren had lit it there among the trees, and it was taking the wood faster than their hands could. It was the very thing Wren had planned to avoid by gathering only at trees with no fire near them, and it touched another question Wren keeps coming back to: how far from a burning fire a tree has to be before its logs stay in their hands.

By then Wren had one log left. Their eyes went past the flames to a tree farther off that still had plenty on it.

“The fire I lit here among the trees is eating the logs before they reach my hands. I'm down to one log. The tree a little farther off still has plenty on it, so I'll go there and pull logs away from this fire.”