And I am telling you that there are things a child does: she sits on her father's knee, picks up dice, rolls them in a cup and tips them over before she learns that her father plays at it because everyone at his table leans very close, and if she spots a lie there she spots it everywhere. [Talking about home like this isn't comfortable. Her voice won't stay level.] A little girl doesn't know why her mother paints her face but she'll still sit behind her dresser every night, take up the brushes and do it too.

There is a thing I was taught by someone dear. [Does that give her away? That hitch? That pause that feels like a little betrayal here and now like this.] About learning to play their games so people never suspect, because it's easier to make your way through life when no one suspects. When you don't ever give them pause to do it.

So I say that you ask me these questions now, after I read that they were the called the Maker's First Children. I think of lessons I learnt before I ever knew they were lessons, things I do without thinking, easy as breathing. Taps his fingers when he lies, won't look at me in the face because she's embarrassed to be seen with someone like me. Across worlds they mean the same thing. Sting the same way. Same lesson, same way of learning them maybe.

[She has tried so very very hard to fit in here. But there was a painful question when she forgot-- This isn't easy and she doesn't know why it makes her feel so small.]