I have started this story four times. And four times I have stopped after the first paragraph in frustration. I am staring at these false starts when Thirukedi says, "You will not find a solution to your problem."

I stand up reflexively even though I'm not sure if that's the right response: do I bow to this emperor? Kneel? Stand? I settle for offering him a chair, but he prefers to stand, looking out the window.

"The story?" I ask, when I find my tongue, guessing that I'm allowed to ask since he started the conversation.

He nods. "You wish to speak of the Demure and yet you cannot find his voice."

"Yes," I say, returning to my frustrations. "When I start the story in third person, it falls flat immediately; all these stories without humans in them want to be told in first-person, and you Ai-Naidar in particular like to speak directly to us. But when I start the story in first-person I can't seem to get him to talk, or he talks and doesn't sound like himself. It's almost like he doesn't think of himself as an "I" even in his own head...!"

"That would be because he does not," the Emperor says. Kindly, I think. "Like many of the best Decorations, he is so accustomed to the Abased form of speech that he thinks in it."

"I've translated Abased before," I protest, but uneasily, because I've never been happy with how. "I've used the passive tense: 'an offense was committed by me.' That sort of works. Better than 'this one committed an offense,' anyway."

"But those are poor renditions," the Emperor says. "The true Abased grammar allows the speaker to subordinate the self to the universe. There is no "I" except that implied by it being spoken, or thought. And when you attempt that in your own tongue, you write nonsense, or non-story, because you do not conceive of story without actors, and actors without agency. The Decoration allows life to happen to him. He observes. But he is a part of it all the same."

"So he has no agency."

"Not that you would perceive," the Emperor says. "He has desires, dreams and goals. But he would never speak of them. He attempts to embody them and then the universe responds."

"Or doesn't," I say.

"Or doesn't."

"That's not much of a story," I say.

"And yet, things happen to the Demure in the story," the Emperor says. "He responds to them. He changes."

"But I can't talk about those changes if he isn't present in his own head!"

"It would be very difficult given your language and your narrative traditions," the Emperor agrees.

I throw up my hands. "So how do I tell the story?"

"In English?" He smiles. "You allow someone else to narrate. Like me."

I pause, taken aback. "I... am not sure I can do your voice justice, Thirukedi."

"Then you cannot tell this story," he says, and smiles at me before he leaves...

...knowing very well that I can't let a challenge like that lie. I look at my notes. I really want to tell this story from the Demure's viewpoint, because I want to bring the sense of calm and oneness in his head to the people reading it. But I really, truly can't figure out how to do it, without resorting to something truly bizarre, like writing it as a set of haiku. Going at it from someone else's voice seems like the easy way out. Even if it might be the only way out. And I certainly could do worse than someone as exalted as the Emperor himself as the voice...!

Three scenes. This story is three bloody scenes and I've been stopped up on it for almost a year. *sigh* The more I write this culture, the less capable I feel of writing this culture.


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Tags: ai-naidar, meta-conversations, writing
Current Mood: puzzled/frustrated

"What are you looking for?"

I look up from the Ai-Naidari vocabulary, so long neglected, and find the Calligrapher waiting.

"I wish I knew," I murmur. "I miss you and Shame and Kherishdar."

"...but?"

I smile faintly. "I'm scared of the First Servant. I wish I could write something quieter again, like The Aphorisms. I don't suppose you have a cousin?"

"Most of us do," the Calligrapher says, sitting politely near enough to talk, but also politely distant enough not to intrude. He glances at the word on my notepad and adds, "You have defined that one wrong."

I glance down at tainanpad. "That doesn't surprise me. I have incompetent. Or incapable. Or insane. Which is it?"

"A little of all, a little of none," the Calligrapher says. "A person is tainanpad when they are... emotionally disabled. In a state where they are incapable of fulfilling their duties or responsibilities or courtesies, or their ability to do so is impaired." He pauses. "I do not know where you found 'insane'."

"Probably because our legal system allows people to claim insanity as a reason for acting the way you describe," I mutter. "Why do you have a word for this?"

"Why do we have words for anything?" the Calligrapher asks. "It allows us to identify someone with a problem. And make allowances for their inability to fulfill their promises."

"For which," I am guessing, because they are Ai-Naidar, "you do not blame them."

"No," the Calligrapher says. "They need repair or Correction. Blaming them rarely solves the problem."

"Which is that they're broken," I say.

"Which is that they are creating a hole in the fabric of society," the Calligrapher corrects.

I look up at him sharply.

"Are you surprised?" the Calligrapher asks. "You know our focus is less on the soloist and more on the song."

I look at the word a little longer. "I'm guessing you wouldn't leave them alone to work things out on their own. Even if they wanted to."

"Of course not," the Calligrapher says, serene. "They are tainanpad: impaired. Their own judgement is faulty. That is part of the purpose of society, of other people. You know another word that sounds like this one, do you not?"

I flip through the lexicon until I see:

tainankest [ TYE naan KEHST ], (noun) -- A state of being outside society, to exist outside the system; to refuse civilization and your ishas and to attempt to be separate from all other Ai-Naidar. To be free, when freedom is isolation, loneliness and meaninglessness. To be unnamed. To not fit. A heinous, horrible thing.

"You understand?" the Calligrapher says. "To be incompetent, to be mentally incapable of participating in society, is to be lost. When one is lost, one needs a guide to lead one home."

Kherishdar is implacable in so many ways: if you are lost, you will be found. If you have fallen off the grid, you will be pursued. If you need help, you will have it: whether you're willing or not... or unable to accept it. Tainanpad. "Is there a word for something that is both comforting and menacing?" I wonder.

He just looks at me and shakes his head.


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Tags: ai-naidar, language, linguistics, meta-conversations
Current Mood: tired
Current Music: Depeche Mode - Fragile Tension

"I like this song."

I look up, surprised. "Hi. Long time no see."

Morgan sits on the edge of the chaise longue, sliding his glasses back up his nose. "You've been keeping interesting company."

"Yeah," I say, thinking of Shame and the Ai-Naidar. Then I look up at him. "But it's been a while, hasn't it."

"I want to go home," he says, quiet. "Take me home."

I nod. "This weekend. I'll save the date." I smile. "I didn't think you'd be so eager to end up buried in genets again."

He smiles as he rises, uncertain in his new body. "I suppose you can get used to anything."

"Yes," I murmur. "You would."


So then. Guess I have an appointment with a sequel. Which is good, because my heart is not ready for the Ai-Naidar.



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Tags: blood ladders trilogy, meta-conversations, writing
Current Mood: called
Current Music: The Bravery - Believe

"Stop that!"

"You use too many adjectives."

"For you, maybe. But your eyes are so poor you barely see color at all. Stop taking the colors out!"

"Fine, but these adverbs are all going... what, no objection to that?"

"The adverbs are not my fault. You were just a bad translator. And your language doesn't have enough words for colors. Why do you name colors after things? A plum is both purple and yellow. Wine is red and yellow and purple and clear. Berries are blue as well as yellow, green, red. But you mean 'purple' when you say 'plum' and 'red' when you say 'wine' and 'red' when you say 'berry'. It makes no sense. Why not name the things after the colors? Like we do?"

*whine*


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Tags: jokka, meta-conversations, the worth of a shell, writing
Current Mood: *sigh*
Current Music: The Bravery - This is Not the End

"There's no 'a' in my name," the First Servant says. I grumble and turn onto my other side. "And no 'ih' either," he continues. I think about pulling the pillow over my head. "And that's not the right consonant at the beginning."

"You can't start a word with that sound!"

"You can in our tongue."

"You aren't allowed to have that name! You're not allowed to have a name I can't pronounce!"

He starts laughing. "Well, I do have a... pet name? Nickname? Casual name? How do you call those things in your language?"

"There's no good translation."

"Well, I do have one of those."

"...and I can't pronounce that one either! Please, can't you please have a name I can pronounce?"

"I would say I'm sorry, but I'm not."

When I wake up the following morning I look at the piece of paper beside the bed. Unfortunately an entire night's sleep has only solidified the name; I can't change it or fix it or make it something more tenable for my mouth.

"Tsevet", short form "tset"

I sigh and take the paper to my desk. So, the First Servant has a name.

Bloody characters. *grumble*


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Tags: ai-naidar, meta-conversations, the first servant of shame, writing
Current Mood: *grumble*

"I don't have time to draw Spots the Space Marine as a graphic novel," I say to Claws.

"Good," he says. "Because you got my eyes wrong and hell if my skull doesn't look messed up too."

"Aww," I say. "You're not cursing! That's really sweet of you."

"I... dammit!"

I smile. "Getting under your skin, isn't she."

He leaves, growling under his breath.

But by then I'm muttering too, because darned if I can't see it as a partial graphic novel, and there's no way I'd have the time to do the art to my standards. I'm not good enough, fast enough.

Yet.



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Tags: art, meta-conversations, process, spots the space marine
Current Mood: bleh!

"So I am to take up your education, is that it?"

His back is to me; he is handling my Ai-Naidari primer and the books alongside it with a curious lack of reverence. Maybe he finds the task funny: teach the unteachable, the alien. Unlike Kor, he does not dress in black. His cloak is the deep red of blood the moment it hits air, and the hood is down over his narrow shoulders. His hair is a kind of creamy white; does he dye it? I don't know.

The very first Servant of Shame. He didn't wait half a day after I set my last project down to show up.

I don't even know his name.

When the Emperor first introduced him and his function to society, some tried to call him ekerdari: "Shame the person." But he put paid to that before it could stick. To this day it's Eker: Shame alone, the role indistinguishable from the virtue.

"Are you always so quiet?" He sits on my desk, one of the books in his hands. There is a grace there altogether separate from the Calligrapher's gentle self-containment and Shame-this-man's-successor's taut reserve. It feels more sensual, and the fact that he's caressing the book's cover with pale fingertips reinforces the impression. He's tracing circular patterns the way you would on someone's skin. "That will make this... interesting."

"I do talk," I say. "When I have questions. I just... um, you caught me off-guard."

"Yes," he says, smiling at me. Wow, those eyes are seriously creepy.

He starts laughing and sets the book back on the desk and sliding off of it. "Think of some, aunerai. Or next time I come back, I will supply some for you."

"What do I call you?" I ask to his back.

He pauses, grinning sightlessly over his shoulder at me; his eyes are nearly opaque, the way they are just after he's had them re-injured. "I don't know. What will you choose to call me?" At my expression—does he see it?—he laughs and says, "Ask better questions next time." And then he's gone.

...

Kor never laughed this much. I wonder what I'm in for. Again.


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Tags: ai-naidar, meta-conversations, the first servant of shame, writing
Current Mood: oh hai O_O

o/~ She's so high above me, she's so lovely o/~

"That is a strange sentiment for one of your songs. It sounds almost Ai-Naidari."

Tonight I'm the one sitting on the windowseat. I look up and find the Calligrapher dipping a pen as he surveys his work. We're listening to the radio; I turn my attention back to the song. "I guess so."

"Is it common, then? To worry about station?"

"I don't know," I admit. "I have come to the conclusion I don't understand class issues at all."

"Class," the Calligrapher murmurs.

"The closest thing we have to castes," I say. "Sort of."

"And you do not understand this, why?"

I shrug a little, uncomfortable. "My grandparents and parents fled here with barely the clothes on their back. My mom tells a story about crying at the window of a bakery because they couldn't afford bread. They couldn't even speak the language. But by the time I was born I was playing in the office of an auto-parts business that my grandparents owned. I don't conceive of class because it never occurred to me, growing up, that if you were poor you had to stay that way." I smile a little. "The real American dream. People have called me naive, but my family lived it. That was my reality."

"And this is not so with others?"

"I don't know anymore," I say. "I'm beginning to think I'm missing a huge... a huge chunk of some cultural issue. I can't even wrap my head around it."

"To move from one station in life to another, voluntarily or not, is a frightening thing. It is difficult to contemplate change of such magnitude," the Calligrapher opines, wiping the pen nib. "We have many stories about such things."

"Oh?" I look at him.

"Would you like to hear one?"

I nod, hugging my knees.

"Once there was a Regal," the Calligrapher says, setting aside his tools and folding his hands on the edge of his work-table. "A good and conscientious Regal... but also a sad and tired one, who had taken the mantle early when his uncle died untimely. This Regal was touring his demesne when he espied a Farmer of great beauty, and he was moved.

"Now," the Calligrapher continues, "the Regal was much loved by his people for that he was fair and good, and seeing him, the Farmer was also enamored. He came by then each week, and they spoke and found much to admire. Enough so that the Regal asked her what she thought of being wed.

" 'Perhaps you might leave your farm and family,' said he, 'and come be my bride.'

" 'Or,' she said, 'you might set aside your mantle and join me here as my husband.'

"And they vowed to consider it at length.

"Several weeks passed. They met again. Said the Regal, 'I cannot leave my duties, for they must be done, and it is for me to do them... and doing them well enobles me.' Said the Farmer, 'I cannot leave my family, for they give me strength and companionship, and I cannot leave my farm, for it is my work and it gives me dignity.' And so they parted company."

A long silence. I say, "Wait, is that it? Where's the happy ending?"

The Calligrapher looks up at me, quizzical. "That was the happy ending, aunerai. Each one, Regal and Farmer, was reminded that what they did and valued had created them, and to be uprooted from those things would be to their detriment. They made choices of lasting happiness, rather than chasing a singular whim." He cants his head. "Or is Eros the highest virtue in your society, that passionate love must always be rewarded for there to be happiness?"

"When you put it that way," I mutter, shoulders sagging inward.

"Truly, you privilege strange things in your culture," the Calligrapher says and returns to work.

o/~ I know where I belong and nothing's gonna happen... she's so high above me o/~


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Tags: ai-naidar, culture, meta-conversations, writing
Current Mood: pensive
Current Music: Everclear - She's So High Above Me

I'm finishing up scanning the extras for the retrospective tonight and decided against doing all six extra pages of that philosophy comic since there wasn't much interest. But wow, the dialogue is... one of my RPG characters, in the process of protecting another, lays into one of my 'got through character creation but never got very far' characters for having the gall to give advice to them because she's never had to get her hands dirty in a real campaign where things actually hurt.

O_o

Wow. Just... is there a fifth wall?

Here's the existing page already in the database:


Mage Comic, Page 1

I'll add another page for the retrospective and leave the rest, probably. Unless you folks have some intense need to see the others. O_o


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Tags: art, meta-conversations
Current Mood: O_O

"What is that? How do you even say that?"

"Think 'f' and say 'v'. Vulaij."

I stare at the Calligrapher. "Is that even possible?" When he looks back at me with calm eyes, I say, "Oh, lord, don't tell me that's a phoneme, please!"

He is not a linguist, Farren... but a painter of words. So naturally he says, "It's a different letter from "v" or "f", if that helps?"

"No!" I exclaim. "No it does not help! Do you realize how many sounds your language has? I think I only have half the alphabet down!"

"It is confusing," the Calligrapher demurs.

"No, she just wasn't listening closely," Shame says from the windowseat. I glance over at him and the cover my eyes: he's got The New Adam open on his lap, which is quite possibly the most depressing thing I've read since Ayn Rand's We the Living.

"It's a beautiful word," the Calligrapher says.

"Why am I even still getting words?" I ask. "You two are supposed to be resting, not afflicting me. I'm working on Black Blossom but not that quickly—"

He lays out the words for me, one by one:

aihhe [ EYE hhe ], (noun) – epiphany through suffering

aiqenth [ EYE kenth ], (noun) – epiphany through hard work/long effort

vulaij [ vfoo LEYEJZH ], (noun) – ephiphany through crisis/breaking point

"Vulaij is a beautiful word," the Calligrapher says. "I would paint it in gray and gold."

"Try to pronounce it correctly," Shame adds, and I can't help but think he's smirking.

I growl. "What's this one?"

"That one is useful," the Calligrapher says.

tsavai [ tsah VEYE ], (adjective) – done, forgotten, has been emotionally put in the past... what one says of something that one has made peace with, that it's "done" as far as you're concerned, done hurting or influencing or changing you. Can also be used as an interjection: Done! Gone! Done!

"Oh yes," I say. "Very much! Tsavai!"


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Tags: ai-naidar, black blossom, language, linguistics, meta-conversations
Current Mood: grumbly

"So at last we return to this," I say. "After I have been asking for months."

"Yes," Shame says, curt. My working on Black Blossom has discomfitted us both.

gathe [ gah THEH ], (noun) — torture; specifically "suffering or pain without purpose or result."

"Will you call us amoral now?" Shame asks.

I don't rise to that particular jab. Instead, I say, "That definition's insane."

"Is it?"

"Does that mean that pain that has a useful result isn't torture?"

"Isn't it?" At my narrowed eyes, he says, "You gave birth. Was that pain torture? And if not, why?"

"That's different," I say. "It wasn't inflicted on me by someone else."

"The pain of surgery," he says. "Torture?"

"No," I say, growing irritated. "But the surgeon isn't trying to hurt me."

"Neither are those who inflict pain for some useful purpose."

"Useful to the person undergoing it," I say, finally finding some worthwhile distinction. "But pain useful to the person not undergoing it? How can you justify that?"

"Twisting the arm of someone who was about to assault an innocent," Shame says. "Torture?"

"They're not intending to inflict pain on the perpetrator," I protest. "They're just trying to stop him."

"Exactly," he says. "It has a purpose, that pain. It is not the infliction of it solely for the sake of pain itself."

"But how do you gauge intent?" I ask. "And God Almighty... how do you decide to hurt someone in advance for a result you hope for and may not get in the end?"

"Now," Shame says, staring at me with those pale eyes, "you come to nuance."

I look away, hiding how disturbed I am with wry humor. "And I suppose there's more vocabulary for that."

"Of course." He waits a heart-beat (there's a word for that too, that subjective measure of time), then finishes, "You asked, aunerai."

Which is the closest to "I warned you that you wouldn't like writing this book" that I think I'm going to get. Naturally, that makes me want to pursue it. Am I torturing him? Or are the events I'm writing in Black Blossom sufficiently useful to him as a person that it no longer qualifies as gathe? What's the opposite of it? I turn around to ask him, but he's gone... of course.

I rub my eyes, wondering if I'm up to this. But in the back of my mind, the Calligrapher's pen scratches, continuing the narrative.


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Tags: ai-naidar, black blossom, language, linguistics, meta-conversations
Current Mood: uneasy

"You should stop apologizing for seeming melodramatic when you describe Shame," I say to the Calligrapher. "Once is enough."

"I hardly think so," the Calligrapher answers.

"Except..." And then I stop. "Oh. This is a cultural thing, isn't it. How many times you're supposed to apologize for something." When I see the expression on his face, I sigh and rub my eyes. I am too tired to go chasing the flood of vocabulary that will probably result when I start investigating root words for Ai-Naidari apologies and accepting-of-apologies and forgetting-when-something-is-forgiven or the offense-done-to-the-spirit-when-one-does-not-forget-what-one-forgives.

"This is important, isn't it," I say.

"Yes," the Calligrapher answers. "But if you do not truly have these rules, you must explain them."

And there is something important going on there, but I am too tired to chase it down. Writing this book, I am lucky to get a paragraph before I run into a clump of cultural issues that I need to untangle before I slog on. It's more like writing a scrapbook than a novel. An alien cultural scrapbook with torn-out bits of a dictionary, a book of parables and scribbled calligraphy. That there happens to be a plot in here somewhere feels utterly accidental; in fact, when I try to get too plot-centric, the book slows down and gets stubborn and weird.

Crazy aliens. My head hurts.


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Tags: ai-naidar, black blossom, language, linguistics, meta-conversations, writing
Current Mood: tired

The Incredible Duo!

I am making plans for my series of "case study" short stories for my psychiatrist odd couple and it's coming along well... I have some ideas for the first few stories, an idea for a consistent format, even thoughts on how to use the "publish online" paradigm to my advantage with pictures, links and maybe even sound... and then I realize....

"What do people call you?"

"Pardon?"

I eye him. "At home, you'd be "Lord Seni Galare," but somehow I can't imagine that flying when you're hanging your shingle out as a shrink. Calling your psychiatrist "my lord" is just asking for problems. And you can't exactly go by "Jahir Galare," as that would be a dead giveaway that you're related to the queen. So what do people call you?"

"Would you believe just 'Jahir'?"

"No," I say, grumpy. "Nothing's that simple."


And of course, it's not... because in the vividly multicultural Alliance, naming is as varied as the number of offshoot mono-cultures, and there are a lot of those. For instance, as one of the Glaseah it's perfectly reasonable for Jahir's partner to go by "Vasiht'h", and only that... he'd only give family information to someone wanting to marry him. But I'm trying to imagine a stranger or client calling Jahir "Jahir" and it seems dreadfully informal for one of the Eldritch.

Of course, he's a weird Eldritch, but still.

Ah, close-mouthed characters. What would we do without them.


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Tags: jahir and vasiht'h, meta-conversations, paradox, writing
Current Mood: hmph
Current Music: C is for Cookie (I'm serious)

I am reading a litany of the Sacred Heart, where it names Christ as one obedient unto death and contrasting it inadverdantly with a recent ad that sarcastically refers to requiring absolute obedience as something worthy of contempt when I feel his attention.

I wait, expecting the head explosion.

"What good is obedience if one is not willing to render it unto death?"

"We don't hold obedience as a virtue," I say. "Followers are supposed to judge whether orders are worthy before they execute them."

"Is that so?" Shame says.

"In most things, yes." I look at him. "Which naturally is not the way you do things. Right?"

"If a person in power knows that their orders will be followed only if their orders are good, then what incentive do they ever have to learn to give good orders?" Shame says. "They know their mistakes will have no consequences, so they can be sloppy."

There it is. The brain exploding. I am resigned to the stars floating past my eyes by now, the confetti showers. I am the piñata of alien anthropology.

"We don't do it that way," I say finally.

"No," Shame agrees. "You attempt to create virtue in your leaders by telling them if they become corrupt or make mistakes, you will rise up against them in violence. We attempt to create virtue in our leaders by telling them if they become corrupt or make mistakes, they will kill or hurt others. Either way there will be death."

"In your system, innocents die," I say. "The people following the orders of corrupt people unto death. In our system, it is the corrupt leaders who usually end up dead. And some innocents en route to killing them, I guess."

"Yes," Shame says. "Your leaders do not have another chance to make amends, to repent, to be Corrected. They are slain, from which there is no returning."

"But your system requires the death of innocents to matter to corrupt people," I say. "It assumes virtue and introspection even on the part of those who are wrong-headed. Isn't that... um... a little optimistic?"

"People don't start out life virtuous," Shame says. "They must be taught. Your system presumes everyone has the moral status of an unmolded child; ours requires a certain level of maturity to function, and so it must attempt to instill that level by its nature."

"Does it? Always function?" I ask, staring at him.

"More often than not," Shame says. And smiles. "And no, we didn't start out this way." He nods toward my project notes for the Book of Castes. "So you have seen, and so you will tell the aunera. What good is a discussion of Kherishdar, if one assumes that we are magical paragons of virtue for whom special rules obtain? The true value in your visits to us, O Scribe, is that we were once more like you. And so you ask: how does one become like us?"

"I don't know how one becomes like you!" I exclaim.

Shame laughs. "You don't have to know. You just have to ask the question."

I put my head down on my desk... and when I look up, I'm alone. Of course. And then I realize what he's done. You have to ask the question.

"Hey!" I call. "You're using it against me! My cultural reflex to question things instead of just accepting them!"

I don't know where he's gone, but I bet he's laughing somewhere.


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Tags: ai-naidar, culture, meta-conversations
Current Mood: O_O

"A bizarre question."

I look up. "Oh, you're back then. What question?"

"The one implied by suggesting that one might be attracted to one's ajzelin."

"Does that happen?" I ask.

"Of course." He flips through the dictionary to see where I am with the vocabulary. "Does that matter?"

"Some people would say it matters a lot," I say. "What do you do?"

Shame lifts his brows. "The person who feels it doesn't call attention to it. The person who notices it ignores it."

"That's it?" I say.

"Is that so hard?"

"What if it's really hard to not call attention to?"

He points:

ril [ reel ], (verb) – to relieve oneself; this refers to any bodily need from hunger and thirst, to passing waste, to any sexual requirement

"Just like that," I say. "You walk into a bathroom, take care of it and come back."

"Why not?"

"Isn't that rude?"

He stares at me. "I admit, aunerai... you have defeated me at last. How is that any more rude than emptying your bladder so you can sleep?"

"Because... " I trail off. "I don't know. Do you have frank talks with your ajzelin about... responses? Assuming you have one."

He snorts. "I'm a little younger than him, so yes, it happens. Why would we need to discuss it? Frank discussions exist to set boundaries... but the boundaries of the relationship between ajzelin are already understood. We both know what to expect. Why would we need to talk about it?"

"He doesn't apologize?"

"For my bodily response?" Shame stares at me. "Do you truly apologize for such things? For being attractive? Is it something you do to someone else, to which they become captive and then they suffer?"

"I don't know," I admit, glancing at all the discussions I've been reading for days.

"Do your people have no concept of self-control?" Shame asks.

"I don't know," I say again, because I don't.


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