He was one of the destroyers, an orb who had learned to fashion his features at will into a countenance pleasing to the eye. She had met him at an art opening soon after she’d left university. He spun a silky web of words around her, and thus cocooned was she led back through the night to his quarters. There he showed his true face to her. She awoke voiceless. He was gone and she had not seen him since, until, perhaps, that day in the alley. Over time, she’d learned not to think of him, though her broken voice could not be ignored. She began to practice speaking at home. She addressed the plants, debated with the dishes, whispered soft words to the books. It was outside, with others, where she struggled. It was not that she didn’t have things to say; in fact, she walked around holding back a constant roiling torrent of words. She simply didn’t like the personal attention that conversation required. It made her uncomfortable to have someone look at her so expectantly. And yet ever since that first day at the station, when it all started, she had felt the hailstones growing within, harder ones that would not melt. She knew there had to be answers in places no orb would ever think to look. And so the urge to share these thoughts seized her. She needed to find a person to trust, someone other than an orb. She thought of the quidams, skilled illusionists, only visible in the rare moments when they wished to be. They were likely her only hope.