INDEED, HOW LOST COULD The Archivist’s daughter be?, the girl will think as she tries to sleep that evening. She had thought her father’s tales were merely to warn her, but now her curiosity is piqued. This is a riddle, she concludes, and riddles are solved only one way.

The stories of the Lost Daughter Collective have haunted her since the first time her father introduced her to The Realm of the Real the night before—Or was it the morning of? When in the twilight time between sleep and waking does the day begin?—she turned five. The nights he comes to tell her of the Lost Daughter Collective, she is haunted by the tales of the fathers, but on the nights when he does not come, she imagines what kind of stories the daughters would tell.

And this is how her shadow girls become lost daughters, each of whom has her own side of the story. And while she knows it is dangerous territory to imagine, she cannot help thinking that while the fathers see their girls as lost, perhaps the girls interpret their leaving differently.

She has been working on a piece she calls Exit Father, wherein her three shadow girls perform their tales to an audience of fathers in order to teach them how to better take on their role. Just as her father lectures to his students, there is a message to be found in her piece, if he chooses to listen.

It is the conclusion of Exit Father, the closing moments after the girls have shared their tales, that impresses her most. As a final gesture, the three forms come ever closer until they finally connect, unite, grow into and around each other. And then, in a breathtaking climax, she empties the form, so that it stands not as a compendium of shadow, but as the compendium’s frame.

This is how she takes the daughters that are lost and makes them found.