How seven days had passed since she had disappeared from existence. That it would take the eyes of the gods to find her. Or the heart of the Lumateran exile.

It's too late. Seventeen-year-olds don't need fathers. Oh god. I'm thirty-four years old and I need a father. I can't even begin to think what my daughter needs.

You list the dead. You tell the stories of the past. You write about the catastrophes and the massacres. What about the living, Finnikin? Who honors them?

When I grow, I'm going to be my mother.

Just ask how I'm feeling, I want to say. Just ask and I may tell you. But no one does.

As I walk back to the school on my own, I realise I'm crying. So I go back to the stories I've read about the five and I try to make sense of their lives because in making sense of theirs, I may understand mine.

But you're almost eighteen. You're old enough. Everyone else is doing it. And next year someone is going to say to someone else 'but you're only sixteen, everyone else is doing it' Or one day someone will tell your daughter that she's only thirteen and everyone else is doing it. I don't want to do it because everyone else is doing it.