The swallow Procne one day visited the lonely forest where the nightingale her sister Philomela sang.
“My dear,” she said, “it’s been a thousand years you’ve lived alone—since you-know-who did you-know-what. We miss you. Won’t you leave this solitude?”
Her sister sighed, “I like it here.”
“You waste your dulcet voice on beasts and bumpkins here. You languish in this desert when a gift like yours should draw admiring throngs—should make of you a cynosure! —Besides, I would have thought the rural setting would remind you of that you-know-where.”
“Reminders are the problem,” Philomela said. “They’re what prevent my coming home with you: the towns and cities hold too many. I relive, when any man appears before my eyes, that horror.”
Cruelty can traumatize.