Again I went to stand, and again she thrust a hand out to keep me away. For so long she had kept silent, but I knew her pain was there. I’d see it time to time, etched just beneath her face, betrayed by some set of her jaw, by some flicker in her eye. Betrayed by some fragment of Urbaine’s worm. She had suffered—not as I had suffered—but in her own way, and suffering is not quantified or measured. It only is.
Suffering is not quantified or measured. It only is.
