[The arrival of the creature from memory is startling, as a lance of light through an unnoticed gap between boards. He is not accustomed to animals of any kind, and has been unnerved many times by the abrupt appearance of some strange, unknown beast from the edge of the wood, with wings and tails and all manner of form.

Rio does not frighten him. There is an air about her, despite her alien appearance and her great size, of peace. When she approaches, he unfolds his hand from his lap, extending it to her in apprehensive echo of Viktor's child-self.]

I do not believe there is naivety in the belief that one carries traces of those one has cared for with them. [He says, softly.] Are we not the sum of those who we have known? Who have shaped us?

[More true for some than it is for others, and there is the wall rising before him, the one he built brick by dull brick over the gravest secret of a darkened House. He cannot strike down that wall for who it protects, but he may shift one brick, with bloodied fingers dug into crumbling mortar.]

They died. [There is no poetry in him for this, no lyricism to shroud it.] There was a crèche flu. It is not a thing we speak of, on the Ninth.