The tree-skin comes out of the cold box with a whir, long and thin, still warm like something just born.
I do not understand. I gave the box my tokens. The box gave my tokens back into its own belly. Now it gives me this? A strip of pale bark covered in tiny black footprints, marching down and down, too small for any real animal.
My tribe-mate says the footprints are a memory. Each one is a thing I carried out: the red fruit, the cold meat wrapped in shining skin, the bitter black water I drink to fight sleep. The strip remembers what I took so I do not have to. This is good magic. A memory that lives outside the head.
But then. At the bottom, the footprints stop, and a spirit speaks. My tribe-mate reads it to me. The spirit asks: how was I treated? Was I happy? It wants me to walk back to the box and tell it my heart.
I hold the warm strip. It knows every fruit I touched. It knows how many tokens left my hand. And now it wants my feelings too.
I do not give my feelings to a box that already ate my tokens.
I put the tree-skin in my pouch.
Where I can watch it.