Carabas

As Rumpelstiltskin, I'm singing a verse of an old song from my son's childhood, quiet and bitter and angry. I'm in a room that looks like a private gym - not the sort with weight machines, a room for other kinds of training - and I've been talking with a woman about my son. After singing that one verse, I say that the only thing he'd ever wanted back then had been simple things we already had, things like the sound and feel of the wind through the trees.

The not-Rumpelstiltskin part of me wonders why I'm telling anything personal to this woman - as Rumpelstiltskin, I don't like her or trust her, though we're working together. But I'm so full of rage about my son and the people who've influenced him, and I can't take any sort of action about it right at this moment. I sing the next verse from that childhood song, and that woman puts her arms around my neck, leans her forehead against mine. I'm too focused on my rage and that song to pay much attention to what she does. I don't mind her getting that close to me, but I'm aware any expression of sympathy from her is just an act, not something she's really capable of, any more than I'm capable of feeling sympathy for her.