November came in with the first hard frost.

Kira noticed it before anyone else — she was at her bedroom window at first light, watching the garden patterns the cold had made on every surface, the particular geometry of frost that followed its own logic and didn't repeat. She came downstairs with her question notebook already open, writing while she walked, which she rarely did because she'd told me once that walking-writing was for noticing things, not for thinking things through.

She'd been noticing.

"The frost makes new patterns every time," she said, sitting down at the kitchen table, still writing. "Not random. It follows the surfaces. But never the...