Hours became nights and days, nights and days weeks, but still I sat, watching the rectangle, knowing that he would want everything to be perfect before we set sail for a new life.

Then one day I saw the walls turn to white snow. Flakes fell upon my fingertips and I noticed a certain uniformity in each, as if they were tiny portraits of the webs I'd woven around myself.

I began to see beyond the white snow walls, to see hallways and doors and rooms and homes and streets and restaurants and cinemas and bars in which the world still spun. I saw roses and violets, tulips and pansies, women with flowers in hand as men held hearts to their chests with promises in their eyes.

It was Valentine's Day, a fitting occasion for his rescue.

That certainty lit a fire that had been dwindling, and from its heat the walls of snow began to melt, to fall away and gather in a small sea under me. I couldn't swim, but he had prepared for that, the one piece in the room that would not melt being the grey door of solid wood.