Interlude IV: Sore, and in Need of Comfort

Five years after the bonfire of the bull, teenage Carolyn resurrects abruptly with Jennifer tending her. Disoriented, she surveys her wrecked room and ink-stab scars, then slowly recalls David arriving naked with a pretext scroll and quoting Father’s license to take “spoils.” Carolyn resisted to divert him from a hidden bookcase, but David overpowered, nailed, and killed her.

Jennifer gently probes, offering comfort and professional concern, and notes Alicia’s absence and Michael having found the body. Pressed, Carolyn describes translating David’s text and his predation. Jennifer questions why Carolyn fought, and Carolyn deflects with anger at David’s nature. Jennifer reveals David similarly brutalized Peter and confides a recent near-dereliction: she delayed resurrecting David and Margaret after one of their lethal trysts, only for Father to return early and lecture her at the bull without further punishment.

They discuss Father’s possible leniency and the peril of even thinking about his death. Jennifer warns Carolyn not to broach resurrection contingencies again, then offers friendship and a stargazing respite while diagnosing a “maximize the bad” coping pathology she sees in Margaret, David, and now in Carolyn.

Afterward, Carolyn scours herself raw in the baths, rebuffs Rachel’s support, and passes armored Father and a grinning David without reaction. Back in her room, she restores order, salvages a pen, and retrieves a hidden slip describing the alshaq urkun, a rite that renders matter transparent—and the user blind.

Invoking the alshaq, Carolyn navigates the Library by memorized steps to stealthily return a stolen red volume, Mental Warfare vol. III: The Concealment of Thought and Intention, then selects another red book. She sits at her scarred desk and begins The Plotting and Execution of Vengeful Murder by Adam Black, focusing on subjugating a martially superior foe, finding comfort in planning revenge.