I'd been out in the world for only a few years, and I had barely touched it, moving in silence and stealth, watching and not being seen, but oh, I had *loved it*, I realized. I'd thought I'd hated it, but I'd loved it. Loved the people and their dialogue and their clothes and their mysterious errands and the shops full of goods and every shopper hunting for something for someone, every one of them part of a story that I would never be part of, but I could be *next to* the stories and that was enough. I was going to live in an attic again. I started to cry. He came to me. he put his arms around me. He nuzzled my throat and licked up the tears as they slid past my chin. "Shhh," he said. "Shhh." He took off my jacket and my sweater, peeled down my jeans and my panties, and ran his fingertips over me, stroking me until I quietened. He touched me reverently still, his breath hot on my skin. No one had ever touched me like that. He said, "I can fix you." I said, "No one can fix me." He said, "I can, but you'll have to be brave." I nodded slowly. I could do brave. He led me by the hand into the bathroom and he took a towel down off of the hook on the back of the door and folded it into a long strip. He handed it to me. "Bite down on this," he said, and helped me stand in the tub and face into the corner, to count the grid of tiles and the greenish mildew in the grout. "Hold still and bite down," he said, and I heard the door close behind me. Reverent fingertips on my wing, unfolding it, holding it away from my body. "Be brave," he said. And then he cut off my wing. It hurt so much, I pitched forward involuntarily and cracked my head against the tile. It hurt so much I bit through two thicknesses of towel. It hurt so much my legs went to mush and I began to sit down quickly, like I was fainting. He caught me, under my armpits, and held me up, and I felt something icy pressed to where my wing had been -- I closed my eyes, but I heard the leathery thump as my wing hit the tile floor, a wet sound -- and gauzy fabric was wrapped around my chest, holding the icy towel in place over the wound, once twice thrice, between my tits. "Hold still," he said. And he cut off the other one. I screamed this time, because he brushed the wound he'd left the first time, but I managed to stay upright and to not crack my head on anything. I felt myself crying but couldn't hear it, I couldn't hear anything, nothing except a high sound in my ears like a dog whistle. He kissed my cheek after he'd wound a second bandage, holding a second cold compress over my second wound. "You're a very brave girl," he said. "Come on." He led me into the living room, where he pulled the cushions off his sofa and opened it up to reveal a hide-a-bed. He helped me lie down on my belly, and arranged pillows around me and under my head, so that I was facing the TV.