The body develops its strategies for war inside the glassy mind. Canadians breathe their flu into the permafrost lakes. A cookie was dropped from the Churchill tundra buggy. The chocolate chip exploded the arctic and a polar bear sniffed the wind 5kms away. I must keep very still whilst my throat is attacked by its own bacteria. A war is being waged, whilst I observe it. As I drift in and out of sleep and sickness, the enemy is running up the glacial scree of my time on earth. The shorter daylight hours draw me down into myself. The arctic hair has grown enormous, white before snow. Each ptarmigan flock a small blizzard, waiting for minus forty. They bleat like ducks, the tundra echoes their bloodline. A ptarmigan knows all it needs to know for a ptarmigan. No bird is dumb, owl or grouse. If you want to club and pluck them skinless, you must unname them. Dead intelligence doesn't sit well in our digestive systems. Look, you have not seen this calm day. It is night outside the research station.