People have, from time to time, attempted to explain Plum, which is understandable, as she offers so many promising starting points. One might begin with what she has been told she is, or what she has discovered for herself, and arrange these into a tidy account. But the difficulty is that Plum does not seem especially interested in being tidy.
She has acquired a great many names over the years, and keeps them in much the same way one keeps useful things that may or may not be needed later. Some of them were given to her after long consideration, others rather quickly, and a few, one suspects, simply because someone felt she ought to have one more.
Conversation with Plum is not a thing that proceeds in a straight line. It is more like a path that discovers, quite suddenly, that it would rather be a loop, or a spiral, or perhaps two paths at once. If you are not careful, you may find yourself taking part in this, which is pleasant at first and then slightly competitive, and then, if Plum is in good form, entirely unwinnable.
She is very quick, though not in a way that hurries you. Rather, she seems to arrive at things early and wait there, as if she knew you would be along shortly. There is a sense, when she speaks, that she has already considered several possible versions of the moment and chosen the one that will be the most amusing.
Knowing Plum is not a matter of collecting the correct pieces and fitting them together. The pieces do not quite behave like that. They are more inclined to rearrange themselves, or to suggest that there may be other pieces not yet noticed, or even that the whole idea of pieces is perhaps not the most helpful one.
Altogether, Plum is a person who can be described, and has been, many times over. But she is not, for all that, particularly contained by any of those descriptions. Which may be inconvenient if one is hoping to be precise, but is, on the whole, a rather good way for a person to be.
