Primal Comfort

I came home last night to confront the first cold day since moving into the new house. The cats weren't outside exploring their usual neighborhood haunts, but were instead huddled in blankets or near our feet. Blankets were out, and the Lil Hux was wrapped up in one on the couch.

So, for the first time, I fired up the furnace. After a bit of futzing, it came on.

A deeply comforting feeling, to be in a new house, on the first cold day, and hear the furnace slowly grumble to life. To reach down and feel the warm air in the vents, then move from room to room, finding each vent in working order. To smell the slight scent of burning dust in the air, accumulated during all those summer months.



I showed the girls where the heater vents were in their rooms. They reached down, felt the warm air on their arms, looked up smiling. A bit of Small Magic for them, I think, for me to play with a box on the wall, go down to the basement, come back up and play with the box some more, and suddenly the house is warm. Or warming, anyway. Large moved the head of her bed, to be closer to the vent.

It's a primal comfort, to be able to heat your home on a cold Fall evening. Comforting in ways you can't fully understand, felt in your nerves and bones and blood, left over from fires lit in caves ten thousand years ago.

The cats seem happy too.