The forest doesn’t welcome you. It absorbs you.
It is December 22nd. I have been here for three cycles. My left arm is now entirely blue. The pigment has crossed my clavicle. I can feel the forest’s thoughts—static, cold, recursive. It wants me to update the log. It wants me to write the next patch.
I set up my base camp at the boundary. My Geiger counter ticks not for radiation, but for melanin depletion . The closer I get to the epicenter—a hollow where the snow glows like a cold flame—the more my own hands turn the color of a deep bruise.