Below, three separate huts sit at different distances across the packed earth — each with its own thatched roof, its own dark doorway, and a single square window lit warm gold from within, the only sign of the life going on inside each one. Faint paths, barely more than worn lines in the dirt, converge from all three houses toward a single point in the yard. At that point stands a lone silhouetted figure — featureless, faceless, just a dark shape with arms slightly apart — planted in the space between all three homes, belonging fully to none of them. The ground beneath him deepens from rust-brown to near-black at the edges of the frame, grounding the warm sky above. The image mirrors the novella's central image: one man, three lit houses, and the open, empty ground he has to keep crossing between them.