It was quiet and lonely and I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to do there. So I puttered around the cottage doing absolutely nothing. It took my wife an entire two hours to tire of my puttering, then she told me to see if there were any good books to read on the shelf in the living room; she thought I should find a nice place to sit and relax. I must say the book shelf held an impressive collection, though I'm still not sure why the owner would leave his books here to be handled, destroyed or possibly taken by anyone who stayed here; maybe he knew I did not have any of my own to read. There were numerous classics, books by Charles Dickens, Jules Vern, J.R.R Tolkien, there was even some of Shakespeare's plays, and a book of his sonnets on the shelves. "The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe", and the books that follow in the series by C.S. Lewis were on these shelves; but there were also other numerous books written by him that I had never heard of before, Letters to Children, Surprised by Joy, something called The Screwtape Letters, there were more but this one caught my eye. Such a strange title, and it looked shorter than the rest of the books on the shelf, so I decided to read it; in any challenge I had always started small and worked my way up. I hadn't read a novel since my college days, and probably was not fit enough to follow a plot line develop through 300 pages. I found a comfortable recliner and began to read.

Reading was anything but relaxing; the book was about as screwy as its title, and was no easy read. The entire novel was a collection of letters from a demon. To think my wife thought that I needed a vacation, and here this guy was trying to figure out what the devil thinks. I never in my life believed in the existence of the devil, or demons, finding it to be a weak excuse for the hardships of our lives, a ranting of superstitious beliefs. I read on though, it was interesting enough, and well written.

Sometime later in the week, my wife discovered a fire pit in the backyard, and a great deal of firewood nearby. She thought it would be a novel idea to create bonfire that evening. I sat outside in a wooden chair, which was more comfortable than I had expected, and watched the sun as it crept down below the horizon; splashing magenta, dark pink and orange around the sky. The colours streaked it as if to leave behind a trail, like slugs leave trails of shiny slime behind them. However, slime dries, and the streaks left by the sun also vanished, and my wife began to set up the fire pit. She soon had the fire crackling and burning in a steady blaze. It got quite cold outside after awhile, and my wife had had enough of the novelty and decided to go to bed. I stayed in my chair, and watched the fire die away, not feeling particularly out going enough to do anything else. I sat there, staring intently into the pit, until the last of the dying embers took its leave. I was left alone in darkness, alone with my consciousness. Thoughts and questions were resounding in my head from the book that I had read.