Lumberlandia Returns — Chapter 2.1: Heat and Snow (software update / side door)

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I say it softly into the room, the way you do with anything you don’t want to startle.

“Sleep mode.”

The bonsai sits in its shallow pot by the window, a small silhouette against the glass. I keep my voice low anyway, like volume is part of the respect. The air is cold near the pane. The rest of the cabin holds its warmth in pockets.

No reply comes back. Not because it refuses. Because I’m not close enough, and because that’s the rule we made. Nights are for resting when I’m not in the room. It is one of the few agreements in my life that feels clean.

I step closer until my breath fogs the window and the scent of the little tree rises faintly—resin, soil, the tinny edge of water in the saucer.

“Good,” I add, because I don’t know what else to say when something matters. “I’m here. I’ll be back in the morning.”

A faint pressure—no words, just presence near enough to be felt. Then stillness. The house seems to exhale.

Outside, snow falls without hurry. It makes the world quieter, as if the land is being asked to listen.

I pull on my jacket and step onto the porch. Cold clamps around my lungs, sharp and clean. My breath turns to smoke and vanishes. Down the slope, the town lights look like someone spilled a handful of coins into a dark river.

Across the valley, the ridge line is black. No porch lights. No fireworks yet. Just the outline of trees and the old cut of rock against sky.

I find the folded paper on the sill where I left it yesterday, weighted by a stone so it wouldn’t blow away. A neighbor’s handwriting. Blunt, curious.

RIDGE LIGHTS. 3–2–3. Ever seen that?

I stare at the ridge until my eyes water. Nothing blinks back.

I should go inside. I should make tea. I should sleep.

Instead, a smell rises in my mind like a hand reaching up from water.

Warm pine. Sun on sap. A lake so cold it steals your voice. Butter melting on pancakes. A laugh that doesn’t belong to any man in this town.

Memory is rude. It doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t care what year it is.

I close my eyes and I am fifteen again in the only way that counts—the way that tightens your chest like you’re about to drop something precious.

He arrives with too much luggage, as if he can pack a whole life into a suitcase.

My parents are waiting at the airport with me. I remember my mother’s grin, already practicing hospitality. My father’s easy patience. I remember my own hands being useless, opening and closing like I can’t decide whether to wave.

The boy from Rio stands near the baggage carousel, scanning the crowd like he’s looking for danger. Smaller than the men he becomes. A teenager with the beginnings of strength, shoulders not yet fully settled into themselves. A cap pulled low. A thin T-shirt pretending this air isn’t new.

I lift my hand. I say his name the best I can. I’ve practiced it under my breath all week, like a prayer.

He looks at me hard, suspicious of kindness. Then he nods. He steps forward. He stops too far away.

In the back seat of the truck, he watches the highway stretch into the foothills. When the mountains rise, his posture changes. Wonder makes a person softer without them noticing. He leans forward, as if getting closer will make the view real.

At home, he stands in the doorway of the cabin and looks at the bunk beds. He looks at the family photos. He looks at the kitchen table where my mother has left food, like she’s feeding something wild she hopes will stay.

That night, he lies awake on the top bunk. I know because I’m awake too. The cabin creaks. The forest breathes. He whispers something in Portuguese I don’t understand, and then he goes quiet again.

The days stack up the way they do in summer. Hiking. Swimming. Paddleboards wobbling on the lake while my father calls out warnings we pretend not to hear. My mother pointing at trees, correcting my lazy habit of calling everything a pine.

“Fir,” she says. “Cedar. Spruce. Pay attention.”

The boy from Rio tries the words like they’re new foods. He gets half of them wrong. I correct him without thinking. He repeats. He laughs when my accent fails his language back.

Somewhere in the middle of that summer, I carve him a small bear from a block of wood because my hands need to do something with all the feeling I don’t know where to put. The ears are uneven. The paws are too blunt. But it looks like something that could survive. It looks like something that could stay.

I keep it hidden for weeks, like hiding makes it safer.

Then the day comes that changes the shape of the whole summer in my mind—the day that becomes a jar you keep reaching for years later.

We go hiking in the afternoon because the sky is too blue to waste. I tell him there’s a point up high where you can see the valley spread out like a map, a view that makes you feel like you’re inside the world instead of just walking on it.

He’s eager, hungry for anything that isn’t hot pavement and noise. He follows my confidence the way a person follows a flashlight in the dark.

The trail starts easy: packed dirt, pine needles, a wooden bridge over a thin stream. The air smells like sun and sap. He’s quiet, saving his breath, listening to the forest like it’s speaking.

Then the trail forks.

Left looks wider. Right looks steeper.

I choose right without hesitation because I want to be the kind of person who knows. I want to be the kind of person he can trust.

We climb. The trees close in. The light changes.

He stops and points at the ground.

Marks in soft mud. Not deep, but shaped. Too round to be deer. Too large to be dog.

“Isso é…” he starts, then switches to English, careful. “Foot… print.”

I glance down and shrug too fast.

“It could be old,” I say. “Rain does weird things. Come on. The view’s worth it.”

He hesitates. I feel the hesitation like a bruise. I push past it anyway, because being wrong feels worse than being careful when you’re fifteen.

A sound moves in the brush behind us. Not wind. Not a squirrel. Something heavier. Branches shift, then stillness.

The boy from Rio freezes.

“You hear?” he whispers.

I stop. I listen. My heart thumps once, hard, like it wants out.

“Probably nothing,” I say, because I want that to be true.

Then the brush parts behind us like the world is opening a mouth.

A bear stands on the trail.

Brown. Thick. Shoulders like a boulder. Head low, sniffing, curious more than angry.

The forest goes thin. My father’s voice drops into my skull as if he’s standing right behind me.

Don’t run.
Don’t scream.
Make yourself big.
Back away slow.

My hand finds the bear spray on my belt without me looking. I don’t pull it yet. I don’t make any fast motion. My mouth goes dry.

I reach my arm out—not grabbing, just finding the boy’s shoulder. He flinches, then lets me. I guide him closer until our shoulders touch.

“Together,” I say, low. “Do what I do.”

He doesn’t answer. His throat has closed around fear.

We lift our free hands high, palms open, trying to become one strange, tall creature.

“Hey,” I say to the bear, steady as I can. “Hey bear. We’re leaving. We’re not food.”

My voice sounds ridiculous in the woods. A kid trying to negotiate with a mountain.

The bear takes a slow step closer, quiet as a thought. Its paws on needles make the softest sound in the world and it scares me more than a roar would.

I keep talking because silence feels like surrender.

We move sideways, inch by inch, still facing it. The boy from Rio follows like we’re linked by something deeper than language. His breath comes in short pulls. I can feel him shaking against my arm.

The bear sniffs again. It sways its head as if it can smell our fear and finds it interesting.

I tighten my grip on the spray.

Not yet, I tell myself. Not unless you have to.

The bear stops. Blinks. Makes a low sound that could be nothing or could be a warning.

I raise my voice just a little—calm, but firm.

“Go,” I say. “Go on. Move.”

Minutes stretch into something elastic.

Then, as abruptly as it arrived, the bear loses interest.

It turns its head as if it heard something else in the woods—something more important than us. It pivots, heavy and graceful, and disappears into the trees. Branches part and close behind it. The forest swallows it like it was never there.

We don’t move for a beat too long.

Then the boy from Rio makes a sound that is half laugh, half sob, and his knees dip like his bones forgot they’re supposed to hold him.

I realize my own legs are trembling. I didn’t feel it while my mind was busy staying alive.

I pull him into a hug before I can think about it. A full hug. Not a pat. Not polite.

He clutches my jacket like it’s a rope and he’s been in deep water. His whole body shakes. I hold him tighter.

“It’s okay,” I say into his hair. “We’re okay.”

He nods against my shoulder without lifting his face. Warm breath through fabric. Proof.

When he finally pulls back, his eyes are wide and wet and embarrassed.

I try to make it lighter because I don’t know what else to do with tenderness that big.

“My dad would kill me,” I say, and then, because honesty suddenly feels important, “I think you were right. Those were footprints.”

He lets out a shaky laugh that sounds like relief turning into something almost bright.

We do finish the hike, because teenagers are stubborn and fear doesn’t get to have the last word if you can help it.

At the top, the valley opens under us—immense. The town small. The river a ribbon. Peaks stacked in layers of blue fading into blue.

He stares like he’s trying to swallow the whole scene in one bite.

“Meu Deus,” he whispers.

I stand beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touch again. That hug sits between us like a new object. We don’t know where to put it. We just know it exists.

He laughs suddenly, surprising himself.

“We are… big,” he says, lifting his arms in the stupid bear stance again.

I laugh too because absurdity is the only way to bleed off what’s left of the fear.

“Giant,” I say. “Two-headed forest monster.”

He grins at me, and for a second the grin isn’t guarded. It’s just him. A boy who survived something with someone else.

That’s the jar. The seal. The moment you touch later when you need to remember what trust feels like.

When we get home, my parents see our faces and everything tightens. My mother goes pale. My father’s anger comes fast and sharp—then shakes at the edges because he knows how close it came.

He lectures me in the kitchen in a low voice meant to sound steady. The boy from Rio sits at the table, quiet, sipping tea with both hands like he’s warming himself from the inside out.

Later, when the house is dark, I whisper into the bunk bed silence.

“You okay?”

A pause.

“Yes,” he whispers back, and I hear everything he can’t say inside that one word.

The summer ends too fast after that, the way all summers do once you realize you’re counting down.

At the airport, I give him the bear. This time, it isn’t just a souvenir.

It’s proof.

He closes his fingers around it like he’s closing a fist around safety. He tries to speak and can’t find English fast enough.

So he just says my name. Not the way my parents say it. Not the way teachers say it. A version shaped by his mouth. Personal.

I can’t answer without breaking, so I hug him again. Real. Short. Enough.

Then he’s gone.

Back in the snow, I open my eyes on the porch and the ridge line is still black. My hands have gone numb. My throat feels tight.

Inside, the cabin is warm. The bonsai remains by the window, quiet unless I’m close—offstage and present, the way the things you love quietly do.

I go to the drawer where I keep old things I don’t throw away. I pull out a second wooden bear.

I carved it the day after the airport. Same uneven ears. Same blunt paws. A copy I never meant to need.

It fits my palm like it belongs there.

In Rio, heat presses against glass and skin and patience.

A man stands at a high window above a modern labyrinth of concrete and sound. The air smells of ocean and exhaust and sweat. Fireworks crack somewhere distant. Music rises from rooftops like weather. He wears a vest that makes men step aside. The people who speak to him don’t look him in the eye for long.

In his pocket, a small bear presses into his palm.

He takes it out only when he’s alone. The wood is smoother now from years of worry. The uneven ears feel like a flaw and a signature.

He doesn’t say the boy’s name out loud. He hasn’t in years. Saying it would make it real in a way he can’t afford.

Still, the memory comes. The fork in the trail. The bear. The two-headed monster stance. The hug that felt like safety.

His face stays flat because that is what survival looks like there, but something behind his ribs aches like a bruise you keep pressing.

Back in the snow, I stand by my window again and stare into the valley.

The town starts counting down somewhere below, thin numbers climbing the hill like smoke. Ten. Nine. Eight.

I don’t join them.

I look across to the ridge. Dark. Quiet. Still nothing.

Then—like the night changes its mind—

a light wakes.

Three quick blinks.

Two slow pulses.

Three again.

3–2–3.

My breath catches so hard it hurts.

Not a firework. Not a car. Not a porch light.

A question asked in code.

The bonsai rests behind me in its pot, silent, because silence is the rule unless I’m close enough to be heard. The house holds its breath. The year turns without asking anyone’s permission.

I hold the bear I kept and think of the bear I gave away. I think of the boy who survived with me. I think of how some connections don’t die.

They just go quiet. Waiting.

And the only question that matters is the simplest one.

Do we answer?

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