[That feels, in many ways, like a meeting that took place in both another body and another life. For a moment, she can't be sure if that was something that happened to her or to someone else, and she's simply absorbed the remnants of it like breathing smoke into her lungs. It's only in remembering the brief discomfort of the other girl's public embarrassment, the way her unnecessary, defensive ire flared, that Caren can fully remember the moment and the emotions as her own.]

Yes, [Caren says.] I suppose that was me. Creatures take after their Masters, is that it...?

[She's become, in the tangle of bodies and roots, quite vacuous. Perhaps that's the fate of someone whose soul is open to bear away the sins of others; everything culminating around them bleeds into her so easily, while her own dulled feelings pulse out of her in uncontrollable release. It's not unlike the symptoms of possession, if the whole world itself was possessed. Rin's discomfort absorbs along the surface of her skin, causing it to tighten and prickle, chilled or excited or both.]

We are both discovering that what we seek to leave behind isn't so easily unbound. [This could refer to so many things: the thoughts and feelings of other bearers; the worlds they had accepted as deleted as Zenites; or even the burdens they could have left behind in the dying cities.] Silence will only make it worse.