Until it is Xanther’s own pain that speaks through her, in the language only confusion grants when what we must do is silenced by rage:
⠮You have not deserved this. No creature deserves this continuum of anguish. Without reprieve.⠝
⠮But where then is grace so pain and fear do not define everything?⠝
⠮And if I have chosen to live by grace, for goodness and kindness, why is it that I still can’t understand how?⠝
Or what is beyond voice when there is nothing to give? Xanther’s hot tears her only words. The heave of her own ribs the only broken offering she can give. Her grandmother reaching her now, not even Anwar, the voice within a voice within a voice:
“Please forgive me for thinking faith means certainty.”
⠮Our only song through the dark . . . ⠝
— The Familiar Vol. 3: Honeysuckle & Pain, p839 & ff