The whole world is full of books with dreadful things written in them, and like that they are remote in the way a description of of a day will always fail to capture it. Does speaking them aloud make much difference? What if the person saying it was there? What if they are the book the dreadful thing is written in?

This is the truth: Wysteria Poppell is clever, but she isn't terribly imaginative. Regardless of clarity - and he is clear; he doesn't need to describe the visceral horror of the thing for her to understand the implication inherent in it -, the combination of tender skin and stiff muscles which make up the hard shape of Ellis' long ago broken hand make more immediate sense to her than the bitter reality of 'I left them.' She is careful about how his left hand will or will not bend as she scuffs the honey wax across it, but for I ran, the only thing which occurs to her to say is--

"I'm sorry." She doesn't look up from his hand. A lump of scar tissue rolls under his thumb. "Is that why you became a Warden?"