The desert did not purify or improve her. It taught her nothing—except that the loneliness, the sheer expanse, made her rebuild and reinforce herself, like an insistent castle on shifting sands. One sought structure in the flow. One needed repetition, a pounding sound. I am still here. I think, therefore I am. I am Alice Law, I am a postgraduate at Cambridge, I study analytic magick . . . she really did need to reinforce these things, because the sheer, flat wash threatened to erode her sense of self until she was just swimming in a bath of unstructured memories. Faces here;
