a changeling belonging to neither one of them, and although this is of course true of all children, in the end—we are not our parents and they are not us—my father’s children would have come to this knowledge with a certain slowness, over years, were perhaps only learning it fully at this very moment, as the flames ate the pinewood, whereas I was born knowing it, I have always known it, it is a truth stamped all over my face.
