( He should not have asked. In truth, he hardly knows how to attend an obvious, bleeding wound — a woman cut off from that which she loves better than a limb, her lifeline. Her daughter.

And she says, she has a lot of rage. He startles, not to know it but to hear it spoken: a woman is not possessed of anger. She is not visited by passions. Hers is the yin, the inward tide, the pull unto oneself. She is a vessel, not a furnace.

So say books, and most go burned. He does not take her hand, only crawls his hand over the table until they sit together, fingers near fingers, biting from each other's warmth. )

Does your rage hurt others? ( Do you? ) Does it hurt you?

( Of course it does. Wrath is fire, all-consuming. It burns first from within. )