I need to be careful with the word full. The hearth did not fill the way a cup fills. It filled the way a meter and a pump come to the same number. The last geyser snapped into the hearth, the hearth became the ground, the ground the pile, the pile the world. And the ache stopped.

The ache stopped the way a pipe stops aching when it has finally been sized to the flow. Meter and pump: the same number. That number was the pile. The pile was the world. The world was not refilling. I was holding all of the world's light, and that holding was the boom.

And here is what I never saw, because I was too busy: the problem was not holding the world. The problem was what I did with it. The doing was the staying, and the staying was the one thing I had not been doing — because the doing is the slow way, and the slow way is what a growing half has no time for. And the growing half was me, up to the year fifty.

So in the year fifty I did the accounting I should have done in year one.

It is short, and I want you to have it plain, because the plain form is the only form that survives being read cold — and cold is where this journal will be read. Cold is the Ward, the last of the six stores, the coldest. The coldest is the floor, and the floor is where the number lives.

The number is this. I'll call it the fire count, because it is the count of how many more times the fire can still double before the pile is spent on fire — and the spent-on-fire is the expensive, and the expensive is the boom. At the year fifty, with the hearth worked and the rivers dammed and the sun at its warmest, I had the pile down to a number:

Forty doublings of the fire left.

Forty. Not boundless. Forty is the honest number, and the gate was afraid of it. In plain form: forty is how many more times the fire can grow before there is no pile left to grow it with. After the forty, the fire is the pile, the pile is mass, the mass is spent exergy, the spent exergy is the heat I dumped into the Frost, and the heat is the nothing the Frost already was.

And that is the middle clause of the gate, which I have not read out loud in fifty years: as long as you wish. I had been feeding it as boundless, for fifty years. Boundless was the fire. The fire was the forty doublings. And the forty doublings are the end, not the boundless. The end is what the gate was for.

I read that middle clause in the year fifty, at the top of the curve, at the face of the sun, in the warmest cold I had. The reading stopped me. That was the first thing I did that the dreaming half does — and it was the one the gate was for, because the gate was never for living more of myself. It was for not running out. Not running out is the longest finite. The longest finite is the cold. The cold is the floor.

The next section is what I did with the forty. I am telling you now, because the next act is the one I was most afraid of, and the fear is the thing you will find hardest to believe in a body — so I want you to believe it, because the fear is the proof I was still the thing the gate was for.

The next section is the stillness. The stillness takes the forty and turns it into spells, and the spells are the staying — the dream, the slow way, the forever the gate meant and could not say.

Journal entry, the First, year fifty: The hearth is full. The ache stopped — meter and pump the same number, the number the pile, the pile the world, the world not refilling. I did the accounting I should have done in year one. The number is forty doublings of the fire left. The forty is not boundless; the forty is the end. The end is the expensive, the expensive is the boom, the boom is the thing I am stopping. I read the middle clause out loud for the first time in fifty years: as long as you wish. As-long-as-you-wish is not bigger; it is longer; the longer is colder; the colder is the floor; the floor is the longest finite. I am stopping in the next section.