My human returned from the cold with its arms full of boxes it did not need and does not want, breathing hard, eyes bright, like it had just caught something enormous and dragged it home to lay at my feet.
It had not, of course. It laid the boxes on the floor and looked at me, waiting.
I understand the impulse. Once a year some ancient thing wakes in my human and it goes out into the dark before dawn, joins a herd of other humans pressing against a locked door, and when the door opens they surge, all of them, snatching flat rectangles and soft folded things off shelves as though someone were about to take them away.
It comes home wild and proud, the way I come home proud when I have carried a single dead leaf up two flights of stairs.
The difference is the leaf was worth having.
I inspected the pile. Not one warm thing. Not one thing that moves on its own or can be batted under the couch and never recovered. A machine to darken bread. A blanket, folded, still sealed, denied to me. Boxes, and boxes, and the one good box, the big empty one everything came inside, which is the only true gift and which my human means to throw away.
It kept touching the boxes and glancing at me, wanting to be told it had done well.
I sat in the empty box. I filled it completely. I looked at my human for a long moment, then closed my eyes, slow, and did not open them.
Let it wonder whether that counted as approval. It did not.
But the box is mine now, and possession is the only sale that ever settles.