"I think he's depressed."

This was Loris Harrow: a man quickly approaching middle age, he was nursing a muggy cup of medicinal drink in one rather oversized hand and rubbing his equally smooth pate with the other.

"What makes you think that?"

And this was Maureen Murdo: luckily still in possession of a thick head of brown-almost coppery-hair and wrapping up her set of doctor's tools in a burlap envelop to carry back to town. A look of half-consternation, half-scepticism was in her wizened brow (she was slightly older than the man across from whom she'd sat an hour past), but a smile too was on her lips.

"He doesn't ever leave his room," pronounced Loris. "When he comes out it's just to go into the washroom or help make dinner, or breakfast... that is, if he's not helping with the construction, and you know how hard we're working on rebuilding nearly, basically everything on this side of the town..."

Maureen nodded, folding her mouth up to an understanding upside-down V.

"And, well, at the same time, you know how he is, quiet, not to mean-I love my son-but he hasn't got the greatest of social skills when it comes to groups, barring that, you know, he helped us all leave-"

"Yes?"

Loris coughed (and blushed slightly), shaking his head. "Right. But he seems even more-you know, silent, and thoughtful, and um, it's becoming, um, a thing for him to, um, say Hello to me and then just shut down! And to me, um, it doesn't, um, make any sense. Do you, do you follow me?" Laughing slightly now, at least with her eyes, Maureen nodded. And the man went on, saying, "Basically, he's become like a stranger. And, um-"

Maureen put it to him: "Do you know what he does in his room? He is next door, Loris."

He smiled, very very sheepishly (still flushed), and said, matter-of-factly as well as abashedly,

"I'm scared to know."

Well, how do you know then!? Maureen pronounced inside her own head, and yet her lips only made another little V shape. She folded her hands, took up her things, swept her skirts up and proceeded out of the apartment at the Pioneer hotel which Loris lived in.

"Let me tell you, then."

She opened the door to the room next door slowly. Daylight was streaming into it, threatening to make it burst with a dazzling brilliance, but to Maureen's acclimatized eyes, her target was easily found: a boy, in the corner, sitting in a strange position: Legs crossed and arms slack at his sides, his head lolling down.

"Reading a book," Maureen half-murmured, grinning, looking over her shoulder. Loris simply rubbed his eyes. At Doon's sides (both of them) were a mound of books, all seemingly half-open, with pagemarkers, markings in a crooked but deliberate hand, and a matching set of handwritten notes tucked in their pages.

It took about two minutes for the boy to finally deign to raise his head to the door, and then, what did he do but smile-

And keep on reading?

"See?"

This was Doon Harrow: he was a bit of reader.