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Her father warned her against going to the Cabin alone.

He stood in front of her, kneading at his brow.

“It’s unwise to head there alone Eleanor. Running that cabin in summer is a challenge. There’s no modern comforts there. But in winter? With no modern heating, electrics or phone signal? Anything could happen to you and we wouldn't be able to do a thing about it!”

That was exactly what Eleanor needed. She accepted her father’s misgivings came from a loving place, but Eleanor was not about to let him stand in the way of her plans.

She packed Tuesday. Left Wednesday.

“It’s a bad idea girl!” Her father’s goodbye.

Eleanor could see the red marks he’d left on his temple from rubbing at it so much as she pulled away from the drive. She didn’t like to worry him, but he would have to be troubled on this occasion. It was time for a break.

The cabin belonged to her uncle. He let their family use it on occasion, usually in the summer.

Eleanor had plenty of fond memories from her childhood. Playing games with her cousins. Her father at the head of the barbecue serving them meat so charred it was hard to tell one cut from another. Diving into the brook. It was so cold, it was perfect on a summer’s day.

When she arrived at the cabin two days later, the brook was frozen over with slick, black ice.

No diving in there. Although she was sure one of her bone headed cousins would have still tried had they been there. The memory of the boy made a small smile curl around her face. She had not seen her cousin in years.

The cabin appeared like a centre piece in a children’s fairy tale. Smothered in fat flakes, it could be a ginger house, home to a witch who likes her icing extra thick.

Eleanor unlocked the cabin with the big rusty key her father had reluctantly handed to her.

The door creaked open with a loud groan that was one part wild animal, one part cheesy scary movie sound effect. The cabin had been standing a long time and was showing its age.

She stepped into the dimly lit space. The shuttered windows were caked with grime and grease, letting very little natural light into the dwelling, despite the low winter’s sun shining strongly outside.

It had been some time since the cabin had welcomed visitors into itself and the neglect it had suffered from the absence of people (and more importantly love) showed.

Taking a few tentative steps into the threadbare cabin, she dropped her rucksack and case by the door and began inspecting the place. Despite the cabin’s bedraggled appearance, there was no real damage. A lack of damp in the wood. No holes that needed patching. These discoveries came as a relief to Eleanor, who could finally relax in her surroundings.

Nosing around the cupboards, she turned up a few tins of ‘breakfast’ - nondescript lumps that were supposed to be reminiscent of bacon and eggs, with a side of sausage. In truth, they closely resembled something that may show up on a scan for someone in a white room, in a white building, who was about to receive some not so good news.

Looking at what had been left to her, likely by her uncle some years ago, Eleanor was relieved that she had brought her own food.

Closing the door on the tins that would likely remain untouched forever, (unless something very, very, very, very, VERY bad happened and there was absolutely no other choice) Eleanor saw what else was left to her.

A few candles, some of which were already burnt to stubs. A half filled match book. A fur blanket that brought back memories of hot coco from the one winter they spent at the cabin as a family. A board game with some of the pieces missing. A dusty flash light.

Eleanor was going to spend the winter at the cabin with just these items (and a few she had brought along herself).

It was perfect.

It didn’t take Eleanor long to unpack. Soups. Power bars. Anything that would keep (and a few bottles of wine, that would absolutely not keep). These all got shoved into the cupboards alongside the untouched breakfast tins. She left her thermals, her jumpers, and her woolly socks in her case. She recalled the wardrobe smelling of mould, and making anything it touched smell of mould, despite multiple cleaning's.

Finally out came the typewriter.

It was pillar box red with shiny brass keys. Being born after computers were a thing, Eleanor never usually wrote on a type writer, glued as she was to her laptop and her tablet. (Occasionally, a little journal would come out that had a beautiful pattern or a feel good inspirational quote strewn across its front, but these would be patchily written. The occasional paragraphs, poems and lines, with chunks of blank pages throughout.) Eleanor had bought the cheery type writer especially for this stay at the cabin.

Placing it on the worn kitchen table, Eleanor only hoped she had brought enough paper (that was, after all, what her rucksack had been for).

Unable to wait any longer, Eleanor ran over to her rucksack and hurriedly plucked at the zip, grabbing a stack of paper from inside of the bag.

She rushed back to the typewriter, jamming sheets of paper into its waiting jaws. Then she lowered herself into the seat, cracked her knuckles and then poised herself over the keys, ready to strike out some lines.

Too soon.

Eleanor pushed away from the table. The red typewriter looked up at her, all shiny and ready to go. She felt almost as if she had let it down by not feeding it the words that so often swam around her head, but deserted her now she was here.

A walk would clear her head.

Eleanor pulled on her hiking boots (also specially bought for this trip) and her winter jacket, before stepping from the cabin.

The winds pummelled her when she stepped outside.

Eleanor quickly ran back in for her hat (and her gloves and her scarf).

Then she went on the walk.

Snow crunched underfoot, firm to her footfall. It was a dry cold today and would have been pleasant if not for the northerly wind that seemed to be having too good a time making itself known.

Eleanor managed what she felt was fifteen minutes before returning to the cabin. The landscape was unremarkable, identical in every direction: White. A blanket, stark white. The only blot on the landscape that held any remote distinction was the frozen brook. Still as black and frozen as when she had arrived that morning.

Entering the cabin once more, Eleanor pulled the mittens off with her teeth and rubbed her hands together, trying to get some warmth into them. She could feel snow flakes melting in her hair and her face burning with cold.

The stove, I’ll get the stove on.

Eleanor turned to the wood burning stove her uncle had built long before, ready to feel relief, when… of course. No firewood.

Cursing, Eleanor pulled her mittens back over her numbed hands and stepped back into the cold. Somewhat rusty at it, mainly from never being allowed to chop firewood as the last time she had visited here she had been deemed too young to chop firewood, it took Eleanor two hours before she had a modest pile of splintered wood to warm herself and the cabin in.

As it happened, the stove only heated its little corner of the cabin and very little else, so after Eleanor had heated a soup, then a tea, on its small spattering of flames, she dragged the faded kitchen table in front of the fire and sat down again, facing the jaunty, stop light red typewriter and lay her hands on the keys.

She paused, hands primed. Th embers from the fire cast shadows on the page. The flickering and changing shapes of the shadows distracted her for minute before Eleanor shook herself and began to type.

The first four pages she wrote were torn in half and fed to the fire (which roared happily).

The next ten had crosses throughout. Corrections. Addendums. Amendments. Scrawled across the page.

The fifteenth page was torn in half (the half torn away fed to the fire) and the half that was kept was left on the table when Eleanor stood and shuffled off to bed. It was now pitch black, the only light available from the wisps of flame popping out of the stove. Eleanor stumbled in the dark on her way to rest, wearing a small curly smile.

Eleanor did not touch the keys of her stop light red type writer for days after. Instead she would stare at the page she kept, narrow eyed and mouth tilted down, before placing it back on the table and wandering off to chop some more firewood, walk down to the black brook, or to play herself at the children’s board game with the missing cards.

When she sat down at her typewriter again Eleanor produced five pages, after burning thirty (the fire was well fed for a good two days). Aching from being stooped so long, Eleanor stretched and rubbed at her neck. Despite the nagging pain niggling its way from her head to her tail bone, Eleanor’s lips curled happily. It was starting to happen.

After her first month at the cabin, what Eleanor found herself with was a box.

A very well described box, that could not be opened, no matter how much her character wanted to reach into it. She knew every inch of the box inside and out. It’s dimensions. What it was carved from. The gloss that coated it. But she was stuck. She could not move her writing past the un-openable box.

She stood, leaning against the chair, staring down at the sheet of paper poking out of her typewriter, the mingling black blur of words scattered across it, melting in front of her eyes.

Corners of her mouth tilted down, Eleanor dug her knuckles into her temple as her eyes bored into the type writer.

The lollipop red typewriter seemed to be mocking her now with its primary coloured glee.

This was a time for wine. Eleanor slumped away from the typewriter, and the table and dug herself out a bottle from the cupboard. She was down to the last two, the other five having been drained as she poured over page after page of circular writing.

The wine glugged into the glass, deeply rich in texture and colour. It was a still day, so Eleanor had the glass out on the porch, sat in the chair that her uncle had sat all that time ago. He would sit there with a beer, watching the sun rise or fall depending on how long he had been drinking.

She took a deep sip as she watched fresh snowflakes start to fall.

Two lights appeared in the distance, barely visible in the afternoon light. She only knew one person who drove with his headlamps on during the day when it snowed.

Eleanor set down her wine and stood, arms folded.

Her father pulled up in front of the cabin. He leapt from the car and hurried to her, his round face drowning in relief.

“Thank god you’re alright!”

He nearly broke her back with a bear hug.

Eleanor was stiff. “And just what are you doing here?”

“It’s been two months since you left, I thought something had happened to you!” her father said in a garble.

Eleanor disentangled herself from the bear hug. “Well, as you can see I’m fine, so you can go now.”

“Drive back in this weather? Oh no love, I’m staying.”

“I can here to work.” Eleanor stretched the emphasis on the word work.

“I won’t be in the way.” Her father was already walking back to the car to collect his things.

Eleanor sighed.

Eleanor was typing for fifteen minutes before her father was in her way.

He held a page she had been writing and considered it thoughtfully, brow furrowed.

Eleanor snatched the page from his hands with speed. “I’ll show my work when I’m ready, thank you!”

Her father backed away, hands in the air. Eleanor would have felt bad for snapping at him if he hadn’t insisted on invading her work space. She had needed this time alone, to focus.

As the sun was coming down, Eleanor walked away from her typewriter in frustration. The cheeriness that drew her to the type writer seemed to be mocking her now,

Eleanor flopped onto the old creaky couched and sighed.

“Bad session, love?”

For a time Eleanor had forgotten her father was there, he had been so quiet reading his book.

She didn’t respond.

After a gap, her father patted her on the shoulder before turning back to his novel.

The next morning, Eleanor woke on the couch she had spent half the night sulking on. She stretched, then stood, and turned to see her father sat at the worn kitchen table, pouring over her pages.

“Dad!!”

*****

“So this box you’ve been working on, it’s quite important to your character.”

Eleanor stiffly sipped her coco, still resentful that her father had read her work without her permission. “Yes.”

“And they want to open it, but they can’t?”

“Good to see that you’re following.” She said.

“Well shouldn’t the story follow how the actions they take as they try to open the box?” Her father said.

“It’s not that simple.” Eleanor’s lips drew in a line. “It’s… A box but it’s not a box. It’s. Metaphorical.”

“Well what’s it a metaphor for then?” Her father asked.

“It’s complicated. It’s not a simple thing.” Eleanor grasped, trying to convey what she meant.

“Clearly.” Her father stated blankly.

Eleanor’s mouth tilted down in a line and she sipped her wine deeply.

“Look. You don’t have to let me in on what this box is all about love. But you had better know so you know what you’re writing about when you’re writing it.” It sounded simple put like that.

“If you think it’s so simple why don’t you write it for me?” Eleanor snapped.

“I’m not saying it’s simple. This writing thing, it isn’t for me. Haven’t the knack.”

She squeezed the stem of the glass.“Then why don’t you go do something you do have the knack for?”

Her father’s mouth was a line. “I have the knack for knowing my girl. I haven’t seen you this stuck in a long while.”

“Why did you have to come here?”

“Because I love you.” He said simply.

“If you loved me, you would leave me to my work.”

“It’s because I love you that I don’t.” He said looking at her. “Now lets have some soup.”

“I don’t want soup.” She stalked past him and out the door.

Her father found her outside staring out into the whiteness. He wore a broad smile on his pie face and brought hot coco. A peace offering.

“Sorry I annoy you.”

They looked out at the world in the heart of winter together.

“I know it’s a metaphorical box an’ all love, but y’know people do crazy things to escape their… metaphors.” Her father tried to convey. “People have gone to the end of the earth looking for, or escaping, their un-openable boxes.”

Eleanor sipped the coco. It was good. It even had little marshmallows floating on top. Trust her father to think of marshmallows when he’s coming to rescue his little girl.

He leant his elbows onto the rails. “It’s been a long time since I’ve come here. Y’know, me and your uncle built this porch together.”

“Why did we stop coming here dad?”

Her father looked down at his coco. “Things just changed love.” and it was left at that.

A night of board games, coco and laughter over shared tales turned to early hours, and early morning’s typing, which bled into the next day. Her type writer could barely catch a breath.

Her father, surprised to find her still typing, busied himself. Much to Eleanor’s annoyance, the stove burnt hotter because of a trick with the poker and the way the wood was cut. The soup tasted better and light shone bright through the window, brightening the space (“Only takes elbow grease love!”)

Days turned into weeks. Days filled with coco and board games, stories and soup.

As the snow began to melt, Eleanor gathered up her pages. Not finished. Not nearly enough. But she had mined a diamond from some sludge, so she was happy with that.

Reluctantly, and with some pestering required, Eleanor showed her father the pages. Long hours were spent looking over them. Amendments were made. As were corrections. And addendum's. Another page was written, with two people stood over the cheery red type writer. But mostly there was something shared, and there was pride. Pride of a father for his daughter who had achieved. Pride of a writer who had completed a tricky stage of her work.

When the grass started to emerge in patches and the daffodils peeked out again, wearing their yellow hoods, they both knew it was time to go.

Eleanor and her father packed up their cars, both a little disappointed that they wouldn’t be sharing the journey back together. But her father did insist on taking the lead, and Eleanor following behind him, so in a sense…

Her father gave her an awkward hug before they set off. Eleanor rolled her eyes and wore her curly smile. They set off, passing the black brook on the way out, whose ice had finally began to thaw.