I came back to the cabin and found a mouse. It slipped between my boots, jittered across the floor, then vanished into one — a black leather shell, cracked and worn. I picked it up, walked to the door, and flung the thing hard into the evening air. The mouse left the boot like a stone from a sling — a perfect arc, a flick of its tail, and then nothing. Gone.

But the way it fell — loose-limbed and weightless — stuck with me. It wasn’t panicked. It wasn’t scared. Just drifting down like a scrap of paper, as if this had all been part of some gentle plan. A hammock on the air, gliding down to certain good fortune and a long life.