It is five days and today Hux wont eat. I hate him but I dont want him to die we made him eat anyway. I said Hux only the good people have died and I wont let you be like them. Then he cried but he did not try to not eat or to die any other way eather.

The snow meltid a little today the sun is up and hot for winter. Today we went out looking for them to find the bodies maybe but we couldint find any tracks for the snow had coverd all of it. I

do not let myself cry at night anymore because it makes Ciel and Mun wake up and cry too and it is not good for these little ones to be unhappy when they do not even understand why.

Where Linkeree and Batta are and how we built a house.

I am Kapock and I have come back from my time in the forest with Linkeree and Batta. I have read all that my wife Sara has written, and she has written well, for the things she wrote are mostly important. She even now holds to me and cries because she is happy and tells me, Kapock, do not write that for I will seem foolish.

I said, Sara, you are foolish. It is why I love you, because I am foolish too. I cried when I came home. Ciel now says my name.

Sara has already written all things before I left and there is no need for me to add to this because she has written it well, though her writings are not always the way J has taught us to write.

I, Kapock, went into the forest and I was afraid because the snow was falling very fast and covering all the ground deeper than before and there was a wind that moved the snow so that the deep places looked like smooth ground. I called often in the darkness and the snow, but no one answered me. Then I thought to come back but I could not find the way, and as I searched I fell into a deep place and when I got out I was wet all over and very cold, and I knew I would die.

Then it was that Linkeree and Batta came to me, for they had heard my cries and by chance I was not far from the place where they were hiding. They had been afraid that I was coming to do them harm because they had burned the new house, but then they remembered that even though I was not always wise I had never tried to do them harm and they came to me.

Now this was how they had built a house: They found a place where two trees grew close to a steep hill. They cut long branches and put them between the low branches of the trees and between the trees and the hill making a roof. Then they covered it with many branches and dead leaves that they uncovered from the early snows. This way when the snow began to fall they already had a roof, and as the snow was falling they made walls out of branches leaning against the roof and they were dry. They made a small fire at the door of this house, and the wind blew the smoke away but also the heat, and even in blankets it was cold all that night.

In the day the snow still fell, but Linkeree and Batta and I decided that waiting would only make us freeze like the water of the Star River , and we must work to be warm. So Linkeree cut trees while Batta and I brushed snow from a place on the ground, even though the snow still fell, and then we moved the logs to the place and began to build walls. Linkeree and I built the walls as Batta kept sweeping out the snow. During the day the little house by the hill fell in from the snow on it, and so we hurried to finish the new house by dark, but we could not. So once again we only used the walls of the house which were about shoulder high to stop the wind, and we built a fire, and snow fell on our blankets and we were cold but the snow was not as bad as the wind, and so it was better that night and I did not freeze and neither did they.

Then the next day the snow was less, and we finished the walls, even with a door and a little door. Then we all made the roof frame out of logs and long, thin branches but we had no straw for thatch and so we used only leaves and this did well enough for this time, though water drips in many places. Also we made a door and a little door frame to cover the holes and on the third night we were warm and mostly dry.

Then I said to Linkeree, Who built this house?

You and Batta and I built it, he said to me.

Then who owns this house? I asked.

All of us, for we built it. If all of them had helped us build it, then it would belong to all of them.

This is true, I said. And now, Linkeree, I give you and Batta this house. It is no more mine, just yours and Batta's. But you must also give me something.

What can be as much as a house? asked Linkeree.

You must promise me, I said to them. You have to promise me that even though you will live just the two of you here, and will surely plant seed here and make a field just like the field at Heaven City, you will always be a part of Heaven City .

No, said Linkeree. I do not want to be a part of them.

But I said to him, This is a new thing you have done, and we did not know what to do. When you made the cloth for catching fish, none of us knew what it was for, did we?

No, he said to me.

But still it was good, and when we understood we all were made stronger and better by it. Now you also have learned from me and others. Is my woollen cloth not warm? Do you not put cloth in front of your door like I do in the summer?

But Linkeree said nothing. Then I said to him, Linkeree, my friend, you are wise like J, you think of things that no man has thought of before. We need you. But you also need us. How will you plow and plant without an ox? How will you do it without seeds? And we need you to help us make straight walls and to teach us the things you think of that have never been done before. You are part of us, and we are part of you. I said this to Linkeree.

Then he said to me, If I promise you to be part of Heaven City always, and obey, you must promise me that what I make with my own hands will belong to me and what Batta and I make together will belong to us.

And so I promised him this, even though it will surely make J angry, because I think it is more important for us to be together than it is for us to have all things equally. Yet it hurts me to write this, because it seems good to me that all men and women have things the same as each other. For now that Linkeree has his own field to plow and care for, we will be weaker, and he will be weaker, for we will not take care to put food in the mouth of our friend, but only in our own mouth. This is ugly to me.

When J comes again he will see what has happened and he will know that it is bad and he will not make me Warden anymore. I will be glad. And now I make an end of writing and I will write no more, because I do not want my children to read even this much, for it tells only of my foolishness and my children will be ashamed that I am their father, and J will be ashamed that I am his son. I make an end.

J comes in the night.

I thought never to write again, and for several moons I did not. But it is now the moon which at its ends means we will plant, and tonight J came to my house in the night.

He came quietly and commanded Sara and me to wake no one. This is what he said: Kapock, I come to see what has happened while I was in the Star Tower . But I do not want the others to know I came, for they must expect me only in the harvest moon, and not look for me at other times.

And so Sara and I promised.

Then J read all we had written. He cried twice. Once when he read what Sara wrote about J himself, and once at the end of it when I wrote. He said to me: Oh Kapock, you have done wisely, not foolishly. It was a hard choice and no one could have done better, not even me.

But I said, You could have done better, for you see into men's hearts and you would have known that Linkeree planned to burn the house, and that Hux planned to take it away from him.

And J said to me: That is true. But my power is not the power of a man, and you did all that a man could do.