_{[That's the intent, really... and she pauses to answer him, in a calm voice that hides the roiling sea of emotion that makes up her feelings whenever she broaches this subject at all.]}

Yeah.

To protect me.

_{[She doesn't elaborate further than that-- doesn't want to get ahead of herself. But all the same, there's the unspoken reassurance that he's free to ask questions if he likes. She doesn't want this to be a brick wall of a monologue... not even sure if she can HANDLE a brick wall of a monologue.]}

I was... really little. I didn't have many friends. We were poor and weird and people didn't like us much. I had one friend. A little younger than me. We were together a lot. After school, you know...

_{[A pause because man, she's ALREADY encountering difficulty finding the words. How do you describe growing up in a cult? Growing up in Silent Hill? Being Alessa?]}

But, uh...

Humans sometimes... families are great. When a human has a kid, most of them wanna... you know, protect them and make them happy and watch them grow up.

But some parents don't.

Sometimes people have a kid and ... do things to them.

They do really, really bad things to them.