People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don’t feel very much.

Imagine a world without shadows. You cannot touch a shadow, but a world without them is a hard world, and flat.

If you say a word, it leaps out and becomes the truth. I love you. I believe it. I believe I am loveable. How can something as fragile as a word build a whole world?

It is true that I can trip over anything and nothing – a speck of dust, a patch of sunlight, an idea. I move through life like a person with one eye, through a landscape that looks flat, but is really tricked out with hidden depths and shallows. It didn’t use to be so, but no matter. I navigate the world well enough in my own way.

That’s where proper stories begin, don’t they, when the handsome stranger arrives and everything goes wrong?

You don’t mind when he stares at you.” Cecil jerked his head toward Eldric. "He doesn’t stare,” I said. “He looks.

My own mask stayed just where it ought. I’ve had lots of practice.