'But you don't look anything like that.'
'And I don't look like my people. It is the greatest mystery of my life, and the reason they mistrust me.' She rocked herself a little, beyond the point of tears. The man-child waited.
'What is wrong?'
She found she could not answer with words, though the thoughts had come easily enough: too easy, like vague fears taking shape and becoming familiar from the smokes of a half-remembered past. He seemed to sense this, or something like it, and to know that whatever it was she was feeling, he could not help her now. Not yet.
He continued his work, notching the poles with hard strokes from the side of his stone knife, as she moved bewilderedly back to her place. But often as he worked he would look over at her, stirred strangely by her dismay at simple truths he had long since been forced to accept. He thought of this, and it puzzled him. At length he said:
'I cannot always let myself feel things. I hope you understand that.
Perhaps, you must feel them for me.'
She glimmered softly with marble eyes and said, 'Yes,' but her mind was far away. One phrase only kept echoing inside it, gathering deeper associations as it fell, like a leaf, into place.
THE LIFE OF AN ANIMAL.
Night came, and they slept.