For three days the warm quick ones filled the low wooden place with heat, more heat than the sun brings in a full turning of seasons, all of it pouring from a hot box where they burned a large dead bird. I have known this warmth before. It comes near the darkest, coldest part of the year, when the light thins and the small ones grow desperate for company, and they gather under one roof and press their bodies close and make a great deal of noise.
They move so fast I can barely catch it. One moment the flat surface is bare; the next it groans under weight, all that steaming matter hauled from the hot box and set down and torn apart and carried away inside them, and then, before I have properly noticed the burden, the weight is gone again and the surface stands bare and cooling.
They fed. That much I understand. The warm things must always be feeding; it is the price of moving so quickly and lasting so briefly.
Some of them made higher, sharper sounds than the others, and the vibration ran into the floor and into me, a small trembling that came and went like a shower passing over. Whether this was the good kind of noise or the bad kind I could not say. To me it was one shiver, soon still.
By the next morning the heat had drained out of the wooden place and the quick ones had scattered back into the cold. The bird is gone. The noise is gone. The warmth is a memory already fading from my outermost skin.
They will do it again, I think, when the light next thins. I may still be paying attention.
I may not.