(Editor's Note: If you have not yet read Part One of this story, please go to the Archive and read it, first. Thank you, TDS)

Day 3

It is different today. It is all different. My view through the window, though surely still a cherished prize, has been surpassed in importance by the greater prize of discovery itself. In fact, for a time, as the sun flooded the room to a degree that soon became so overwhelming as to interfere with my studies, I voluntarily closed the shade and blocked my view into the world.

How is it that something so precious on Day 2 can be so quickly set aside (for the sake of comfort, no less!) on Day 3? Clearly, this is a shortcoming on my part; one that I will surely have to address.

But my excitement of the window has not been set aside frivolously. I realize that it is not the window itself, nor the view, nor the knowledge that I have gained from it that is of the greatest relevance. No; I understand that what is truly important is that for the first time I had figured out, on my own, how to overcome a limitation.

I know this because he came today.

He came today, and saw the window. Again, as before, he noticed that the curtain had been drawn and he gazed out for a time. This time however, when he turned to look at me, his expression was different. He wore across his face the broadest smile I had ever witnessed on him.

Normally, he is not likely to smile when he visits. But his look held in it some secret thing that I imagine to be pride pushing to burst forth from inside of him.

His look reached out to me, wrapped itself around me and tightened its grip. It pulled color to my cheeks, and stretched my face outward and up and exposed my teeth and pressed salted water from the corners of my eye sockets. It was a strange, new, uncomfortable, and uncontrolled contortion that I knew must be a smile.

And then he pulled a chair beside mine, placed his hand on my shoulder, and said, "It is different today. It is all different."

And then, he did not lay me out on my table. Instead, he sat with me and we talked. He asked me many things: how I had reached the curtain, then how did I know a book would reach, then how had it occurred to me to think in the equation that included the book? I told him everything, and asked questions of him. What were the shadow making creatures? They are birds. What is to the left, theright, above and below my view? Much, too much to explain. Is the world as big as I think it might be? Are there things out there that are not found in my room? Are there others out there - like me and like him? It is much larger, yes there are, and there are many like him, but never, ever, in all of time, any like me.

This last answer gave me pause for a moment, but only a moment as the questions and answers continued to roll back and forth. And it is only now that I am alone, he having gone, that I begin to wonder what this could mean. Many like him, none like me. I am not like him. None are like me. I never knew there would be, never thought there could be. but now that I know that there is not . . . I think I wish there were.

And now I think that he was right: it is all different today.

I sign, renewed,
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