"I've gone to so many shrinks over the years that you couldn't pry too much if you tried," Sookie reassures him, shaking her head. At least he has the decency to ask permission, she points out to herself, even if she supposes that all those years of counseling naturally involved nosing and poking because her parents had doled out the money for it, wanting to whittle everything down to the actual problem at hand. "Anyway, it... neither, actually."

She scratches at the back of her hand. It's hard to describe how these things work. Try as she might, she doesn't have much room for comparison, doesn't have the benefit of having grown up without everyone's minds practically being an open book to her. Normal and abnormal are only defined by the looks that other people gave her over the years.

"It didn't really ever scare me, because it was something I was born with. I could always read people's minds, and honestly, I just couldn't tell the difference between thought and speech, back then. I thought everyone could hear each other in the way that I heard people, that moving your lips was just... optional. Boy, was I wrong."