— Insidious.

Elise Rainier walked the Further as if it were a workplace and not a borderland, bringing from that noctilucent archive the names of things that stifle children. Her fall—inevitable in the sense that all lamplight summons moths and some moths bring teeth—did not conclude her; it converted her to grammar. She is now the clause invoked when terror must be called by its Christian name, the citation murmured when a room grows too quiet. If I work at all, it is because she taught me how to knock—twice for courage, a third time for truth. And though she has fallen, she remains the northing on my compass, the breath I borrow when corridors lengthen.