I am a good liar. I have always shown a talent for it. When other children were discovering that they could paint or sing as though their little throats were coated in gold, I reached within my own skin and drew out a body of falsehood, a chalice-eyed homunculus with beautiful fingers, clasped together.
This other boy was more pleasing than I, he stood straighter and rode with thighs more steady. When he spoke, glittering ladies patted his scarlet cheek and called him clever; when I spoke, they yawned and asked if perhaps the room had not become uncomfortably cool. It was not long before I had given myself over entirely to him, his baroque, mincing speeches, his fantastic tales of his own marvels, his great strategies—oh, the strategies, the ambitions! Laid out like a litter of manticore at his bedside, how they grew and grew, and how their tails bulged with venom. The lies lay over my tongue like a melt of stained glass, and I was praised, I was praised for them.
catherine m.valente "Myths of Origin"