"I eventually started calling them the Dais. I went there to not be alone, and I certainly learned more than I ever would have living in French chalk mines.

"But they weren't." A pause here, and for all intents and purposes, Carlisle looks like he's looking for something, eyes cast upward and mouth curved on one side. Like investigating a problem.

"They weren't kind. And I was a curiosity, more than anything. At least at the beginning. Then I became an aberration."