Every year, near the shortest light, one of the warm houses at my roots fills all at once, the way a nest fills, and the walking ones come from far off, some of them ones I have not felt cross my roots since they were small and quick and now are slow and wide, and they gather around the bright windows and do not scatter for a whole day.
I cannot see through walls, but I feel the heat lift off the roof into the cold air, and I smell the burning of some large bird that is not a bird I know, and I hear the noise, which is the good noise, the many-voices noise, the one that means no one is being left alone this dark.
They have brought a small cut tree indoors. I do not resent this. It is younger than my lowest branch and would not have made it through the drought years anyway. They have hung light in it, which is a kindness I understand: to give a tree light in the dark season is the whole of what a tree wants.
The old ones sit longest. I know them by their slowness now. One of them, who once carved two letters into my south side with a blade when the bark there was young and green, comes out alone after the meal and stands with a hand flat against that same scar, which has healed over and risen and is nearly closed now, the letters stretched and softened into something only he can read.
He will not come out next winter. I have felt this before, this last leaning. The house will fill again anyway, with quicker feet, and the scar will keep rising, slow as I do everything, long after the hand that made it has gone back into the ground I drink from.