I didn't feel physically sick. But mentally. My mind was twisting in so many ways. This diverted the pain from deep inside my brain, where I couldn't reach it, to a pain outside that I had control over. Everything is infected with brightness, throbbing with it, and I pray for dark the way a wanderer lost in the desert prays for water. The world is every bit as barren of darkness as a desert is of water. There is no dark in the shuttered room, no dark behind her eyelids. There are only greater and lesser degrees of radiance. When I crossed over to this realm of relentless brilliance, the voices start.