Are You Not Cold?

The night was sharp with cold, the kind that creeps into your bones, but I didn't mind. I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders, tugging it close as I leaned back on the hillside. The hike up had been quiet, my footsteps crunching through frost-covered grass, my mind wandering with each step. But now I was here, away from everything, it seemed. The stars above stretched endlessly, like tiny holes in the dark fabric of the sky. I hadn't noticed before, but they felt so far away. The Earth just seemed to wrap itself around me, and the silence was like an open wound—deep, hollow, and waiting.

Beside me, the skeleton sat. At first, I hadn't noticed its arrival, but I became suddenly aware of its presence all at once—an unsettling stillness beside me, like something that had shifted in the shadows when I wasn't looking. I hadn't even heard it move, no creak or whisper of bone. It just was as though it had grown from the Earth itself, like a forgotten monument that had always been part of the hillside. 

"Are you not cold?" I asked, not expecting it to answer. 

I glanced over. The skeleton's bones gleamed pale under the moonlight, thin and jagged, like the frame of an old painting. It looked like every other skeleton I'd ever seen—ribs arching in that perfect curve, the skull empty but smooth, no features, just the hollow form of our flesh. But there was something about this one, something in the way it sat, so ornately still.

"No," it said, its voice like dried leaves rustling in the wind. 

I raised an eyebrow. "Not even a little cold? Really?"

  It turned its skull toward me slowly, with that faint creak that broke the silence. I wasn't sure if its empty eye sockets could look at me, but it still felt like I was being watched. 

 "I don't need warmth," it said. 

The words weren't icy, though. It was more like a statement of fact, something it had known for a long time. I nodded, unsure of what to say. The night felt deeper now, heavier, as if the air itself was pushing in on me. I could feel the emptiness of everything around us—the grass, the wind, even the stars—they all seemed so distant, as though they weren't even there at all.

"Why are you here?" I asked. The words felt strange as soon as I said them like I hadn't meant to ask, but they slipped out anyway.

The skeleton didn't respond right away. It sat there, still, its bones creaking as it shifted slightly. The silence stretched between us, and for a moment, I wondered if it even had an answer. "Why not?" it said after a long pause. It wasn't a deflection. It just sounded like the kind of thing you say when you've been around for too long to question why anything happens at all.

"Fair enough," I said, not sure what I'd been expecting. But there was something timeless in the way it spoke. Like it had always been here, always waited, and it would keep waiting long after I was gone.

I glanced at it again. It looked just like every other skeleton I'd seen. The same bare bones, the same empty spaces where eyes should be, the same fragile vertebrae stacked together like stairs in an old familiar home. All skeletons looked the same, right? Bone, empty, still.

And yet... I couldn't shake this feeling; there was something in the way it sat there. It wasn't just an object or a thing left behind. It felt like something. Or maybe it was the silence that made it feel that way. I couldn't tell.

"Were you alive once?" I asked, almost without thinking.

It didn't flinch. Its bones creaked again, almost as if it had to gather its thoughts. It seemed to consider the question for a moment before speaking.

"I was," it said in that soft, raspy voice. "A long time ago. I was full once, like you. Full of things. Of warmth, of... of something. Now, I'm just this."

 It didn't sound bitter. It didn't even sound sad. It just sounded truthful, like it had said this same thing a thousand times, and each time, it felt less and less critical.

"I think I get it," I said, my voice barely breaking the stillness. "I mean, everyone ends up like this, don't they? Just... bones."

"Not everyone," the skeleton said, its voice quiet but firm. "Not everyone ends up hollow. Some people are full right until the end."

"Full?" I echoed, uncertain of what it meant. The wind picked up, howling through the grass like something lost, but the skeleton didn't move. The wind just passed right through it, like it didn't touch it at all. It wasn't even there.

"Full of the things that make them who they are," the skeleton explained, its voice growing softer, quieter. "The things that make them... alive."

I didn't know what to say to that. I looked at it again, at the bare bones, the empty spaces, the way it sat so perfectly still. "So… is there anything you regret, then?" I asked before I could stop myself. I didn't even know why I asked. It seemed like such an unnecessary question, something that couldn't be answered.

Nonetheless, the skeleton shifted again, its bones creaking once more like the groan of an old door opening slowly after years of disuse. "Regret is for the living," it said, the words drawing out like a sigh. "I don't regret anything. I just... am."

It didn't explain. It didn't need to.

I swallowed, not sure of where exactly to look. The wind had died down now, and somehow, the world seemed to get even quieter. The distant stars above now felt strangely close all of a sudden. It was almost like they were watching us, like they had always been watching us long before we knew they were there.

"You're not here, are you?" I said, but it wasn't a question, at least not in the way people usually ask questions. I wasn't necessarily looking for an answer. I knew whatever this was wouldn't explain itself. How could it?

The skeleton's jaw creaked open, and its voice emerged as a rasp, like wind through dry leaves —soft but ancient. "I'm here," it said slowly. "But I'm not. Not in the way you think. You think you see me, but you're only seeing what's left behind. I was once alive, like you, with breath. But now I'm just... bones—a thing that can be remembered but never returned."

It tilted its head as if a skull could even do such a thing. "And you? You're here now. Flesh, heart beating, mind racing. But that won't last. You'll fade, too. Not all at once, but piece by piece, until you become something else—something no one can see anymore. Just like I did."

The words were not cruel, but they felt heavy, like a secret the world had been holding for too long.

I sat in the silence that followed, the cold clinging itself around me, and for the first time, I realized I didn't feel afraid. The skeleton beside me, its hollow form, the way it was both so present and so absent—it wasn't something to fear. It was something to accept.

"I thought all skeletons were the same," I lightly chuckled, half to myself. "But I guess each one's empty in its way, shaped by whatever it was before, like the way a river carves a canyon after years of steady flow."

The skeleton didn't answer; there was no need to. We sat there for a while, side by side, the wind still rustling through the grass, the stars still flickering above. And I understood, in some strange, humble way, that even the hollowest of forms—empty and forgotten as they were held something marvelous in their stillness.

Something that would last long after everything else was gone.