The rain stopped an hour ago, and only the wind howls outside the window, making heavy leaves rustle like the surf — Blind heard a similar sound in a movie as a child and has remembered it ever since. The sky outside the window is gray today — that's what you said — "Gray like your eyes, Pale." Blind just shrugged and took a drag on his cigarette.

He would have liked to smoke now, but then he would have to open the window, and it was already chilly in The Fourth. A draft stirs the curtains, crawls across the floor and grabs ankles, he can't hide from it either under a blanket or under a thick sweater, all he can do is sit on the mattress, pressed against the wall and warm frozen hands under armpits.

The walls of the House are warm, always for the Blind, but they are too old, worn out by cracks, open to all the winds howling in the pipes. Sometimes, in such weather as today, it seems that the House itself is shivering from the cold.

The others have been asleep for a long time, regular breathing and snuffling can be heard from all sides, and fragments of someone's dreams are entangled in bundles of berries and herbs under the ceiling — by morning they will melt in cigarette smoke and the smell of freshly brewed coffee, unless the House absorbs them earlier.

Crumpling the blanket, Blind reluctantly gets up and walks around the room, quietly approaching the common bed. He walks leisurely around the Noble’s castle of white marble, listens to Tabaqui tossing in his nest of blankets and pillows, and finally freezes at the edge, where you are curled up in a ball and with your knees pulled up to your chest, dozing.

Blind quietly sinks to the floor next to you, puts his elbows on the free part of the mattress and closes his eyes. The sound of the wind in the yard becomes the rustle of waves, the distant horns of cars become the cries of seagulls, and the common bed becomes a ship that is about to sail to distant countries.