The day I left and the day I arrived were nearly identical. Once an outsider, now I became an outcast. Each time their words of supplication entreated me to stay. Each time dire warnings fell from their mouths, their lips astonishingly animated beneath their glazed eyes. And each time their hands were carefully cloistered beneath cloaks of coarse fabric. Contact with an outsider would require intensive purification rituals. Rituals I knew all too well. As one who had lived within their midst and managed to break free, however, I would require a different type of purification to gain complete release.