There is a story that says "there must be someone to watch." But the story does not explain why. It is not the habit of this particular author to explain these sorts of things. It is not the habit of most authors, really, to explain the very point of their writing. This is not a little frustrating. Perhaps that is why Einos is a very difficult creature, or process, for us to study--it is not a speaking one, but a watching one, and so as scientists, watchers ourselves, this makes us feel very self conscious in our methods. We know she is not aware of us, and yet, this inclination to watch things that sleep--well, let us just say that it certainly has not encouraged us to happy, easy dreams.
From inside the wire cell, she can still see the forms of those that wander the desert. Some perhaps looking for her; some perhaps just wandering. When night comes on, they sometimes lie down alongside one of the walls of her cell to sleep. She creeps, then, over to that wall and, crouched down on her knees or balanced on her toes, she will watch them sleep all night, as if expecting them to stir (they occasionally do), or making sure they will not--we cannot really be sure of her intention (her face is always shadowed in these dark hours), only of her curiousity. Perhaps she does not herself know why she watches these strange, almost-visitors who come close to her only in sleep.
But they, unlike us, do sleep, and if not easily, completely.
After the wanderer has woken and left, she most often goes directly to her desk and writes, here eyes fixed a little unnaturally wide, looking not a little disturbed. Sometimes we catch a shining line tracing from her right eye to her chin--we never see or hear it, but it must be that she sometimes cries, though only from the right eye, it seems.
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