It does not need tending anymore. It knows what it is doing. Outside, somewhere not far, the sea is moving in the dark. The wood of the cottage has absorbed decades of salt air and smoke and the particular warmth of a place that has been lived in honestly.
This is not a dramatic moment. It is the best kind of moment — the kind that does not announce itself, that simply settles around you while you are not paying attention and becomes a memory before it is finished happening.
Driftwood Ember is for the drive home from the coast. The last hour of a weekend. The particular melancholy of something good coming to an end that is not quite sadness — more like gratitude, held quietly.
The fading fire. The coastal cottage. The drive you do not want to end.
