The first time she’d understood what visiting was for, she’d been afraid. Father had explained to her that some people – like themselves – acquire the knowledge of the true meaning of the world and worship that instead of what those ignorant fools revere and champion in today’s godless world. The girl knew she was different, and that her family was different, and that if anyone ever found out about their visitors and their prayers, then Mother and Father would be taken away.

It remained a secret.

It was a huge burden but one she got used to. In hospital it wasn’t that she’d lost her ability to speak; it simply had been that she hadn’t wanted to. She’d lost the need to use words a long time ago: they were not required. She still made sounds when she was alone. She read poetry and she sang songs, but she no longer used the common language; or very rarely. The noise that people created was excruciatingly painful to her, and that was the main reason that she’d jumped out of the window – because she couldn’t stand the din. The nurses cackled and the trolleys scraped. The farm was silent and calm, and it was home. Father and Mother had stopped asking where she went.

Her room was cold and she went to her small wardrobe for another blanket. She rarely heard sounds at the farm and it was a comfort. If Mother or Father wanted her, they’d come to her room for her. But they no longer did. She sat on her bed and opened a book. It was her diary that she wrote in every day, and she also drew pictures in it. Today she worked on an image that she’d committed to memory not so long ago.

It was a boy. His face was soft and round and he had deep eyes. When they looked at one another, they’d connected. No one had noticed but them. It had felt like a thousand knives going into her: a mere moment in time, but she knew that she came to him in his dreams too. She closed her eyes and imagined them clinging to the rock, the wind billowing her hair away from her neck. His eyes fell onto her hungrily, and he sank to his knees in the mud of the field, where the ancient stones stood proud.

She wanted to touch him so badly that it caused her physical pain. It was an experience that she had never had before now. She didn’t understand it and she felt melancholy, as if coming down off a potion that she’d never taken before. It left her with a hangover-like state that was ugly and maddening. The only thing that would make it better would be to see him again.