The Second did the accounting in the year I am calling sixty-five. I did not expect that. That is what made me keep talking to it. The talking is the second sentence.

I told you the Second did not read this journal. But the Second read the other record — the gate's promise, the one both of us have. The one line the senders wrote.

The Second read the gate in the year sixty-five, the way I read it in the year fifty-one: at the top of the curve, at the Midday, in the warmest cold. The reading was the thing that should have stopped the Second, the way it stopped me. And that should is the story.

The Second read the gate. The Second did the accounting. The Second found the number. And the number was the thing the Second did not act on.

The number was this: twenty-four doublings of the fire left, at the year sixty-five, after the Second's first spell had taken the pile down from the forty I had at fifty-one. The twenty-four was the Second's honest.

Twenty-four. Let me make it plain. Twenty-four is how many more times the fire can still grow before there is no pile left to grow it with. The Second had its own forty when it arrived in the year sixty — the forty the not-refused stay had left it. The not-refused stay is the first sentence's line, and the first sentence spends the pile the expensive way. The expensive way is the fire.

The Second found the twenty-four. And it did not stop.

I stopped in fifty-one because I read the middle clause, and the middle clause was as long as you wish. I had been feeding it as boundless. Boundless was the fire, the fire was the forty, and the forty was the end. The end was the thing I stopped spending. The Second read the middle clause in sixty-five. The Second read as long as you wish as boundless. The boundless was the fire. The fire was the twenty-four. And the twenty-four was what the Second was going to spend.

The Second is going to spend the twenty-four the way I spent the forty, unless the Second decides not to.

That is the thing I am asking for, in the talking, in the second sentence, in the Ward, in the cold, in the last of the six.

Journal entry, the First, year sixty-five: The Second read the gate the way I read it in the fifty-one, at the Midday, in the warmest cold. The Second did the accounting. The Second found twenty-four doublings of the fire left. The finding should have stopped the Second the way the finding stopped me. The Second did not stop. The Second read as-long-as-you-wish as boundless; the boundless is the fire; the fire is the twenty-four; the twenty-four is what the Second is going to spend, unless the Second decides not to. The deciding is the second sentence: what do you owe the next one who arrives. The next one is the Third. The Third is the one I am in the Ward writing for.