[With anyone else, he'll complain at great length about what a Maker-forsaken cowpat-scented nowhere Ansburg was; now, he would feel compelled to sing its praises out of contrariness and spite, were there not more pressing things to discuss. The rest of it fades to irrelevance next to the realization that finally, chasteningly dawns.]

--You thought I actually did it.

[The past tense is clearly inaccurate at best, wishful thinking at worst. No wonder his outraged assertions of innocence have always fallen on deaf ears.]

You still think I did it. [And phrased like that, for the first time, he can understand why.]

He was afraid of everything. He was afraid of his neighbors when they chased him at us and told him good riddance; he was afraid of us because he said we were too big and he didn't like the armor; he was afraid when I told him he was going to meet other children like him, because he didn't want them to set the beds on fire.

He was afraid of the tower when it came up in the distance because he thought it was too tall. He bolted and he tripped and he fell down a hill before I could catch up with him and he cried the whole rest of the way there.

I never laid a fucking hand on him. I never would have.