"I don't feel real and my entire body feels numb like it doesn't belong to me."
"It is part of the shock but you are coming to yourself. You are."
"Are you real?"
"What's real? Will you be here in a hundred years? You need me, and that makes you more real than you ever have been before. Come and slide down a little further. Near the open window. That's it." Gabriele scooted carefully to the other side of the room where the bookshelf went over the window. "Yes, good; now crawl down onto a lower shelf and let me take you from this state."
"Yes," said Gabriele, and she swung down to the third shelf.
"Good my dear. Look, I am here too. Now we will dive together."
"Dive? But you don't want me to fall."
"Fall from the bookshelf, no." She hesitated as if not wanting to say anything more.
"What is it, Rita/Lily? Tell me as a friend."
"If you were to go back you would be stone. There is no life in that. Really there is no other choice. We will dive from the window."