I sit and ponder my existence: how I'm here, what put me here in these thoughts, these feelings, birthed from a timeless sleep, what it felt like, or rather the lack thereof, to not have been and now to 'be', and suddenly, I realize how absurd I am to exist, the fragility in my understanding of existence; I then wonder why the supernatural, the thought of other beings, of God or of gods, must be distinctly absurd - by which I am no longer sure. 'If I exist and I have made myself absurd to me, then why not they exist while merely believed absurd by me?' Perhaps it is true that in a wandering head, one full of wonders, the natural becomes supernatural and the supernatural becomes preternatural (or rational within the sights of discovery and explanation), just as the return home after a life-long journey feels, for a moment, foreign after the many experiences.

The Earl of Woolsey was indeed completely nude. He did not seem particularly perturbed by this fact, but Miss Tarabotti felt the sudden need to close her eyes tight and think about asparagus or something equally mundane.

He has been mad for you these many months, ever since you prodded him in the nether regions with a hedgehog.

Great, Alexia thought, I have gone from soul sucker to electrical ground. The epithets just get sweeter and sweeter.