Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [218]

I saw its bloody wounds as it twisted. I bit my tongue as the pain I knew it must feel became my pain. What to do? Keep walking? I couldn’t. One more step and I would fall and lie in the dirt, helpless against the pain. Or I might fall into the canyon. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 218

Note

Hyperempathy is dramatized through grammar rather than explained: the interrogative fragments (‘What to do? Keep walking?’) break Lauren’s narration open as the borrowed pain overrides her body, and ‘the pain I knew it must feel became my pain’ marks the instant of involuntary transfer. The fall it threatens is doubled — dirt or canyon — and ‘one more step’ makes the symptom identical to the danger her position already posed (the crumbling edge of [209]).