Yet something else trickles in between the cracks of this despairing thought. The hope of something to fill that emptiness. The hope that, perhaps, I have found it already. And suddenly hope is a thing alive, soaring in me. Its wings beat against my ribs, wild with the promise of joy.

They are faithful, even if we are not.

Do not lose your heart," she said. What she did not tell me was that the surest way to lose it was to hold it tight.

Each step I take toward him is one more step closer to home.

Perhaps someday, when you are a father, Prince, you will understand how empty is your heart if your child is a hollow toy that you can move where you will him to be

In my world," said Posy, "authors write stories, and the characters do whatever the author tells them. It's not like this--the characters don't have minds and lives of their own.""How do you know this?" was Caris' surprising reply. The corner of her mouth turned up in a playful smile. "You do not see the characters when the pages of the book are shut. Is there never a time when you read a book for the second time and you notice something that you didn't remember from the first time? Or hear a story told, and every time it is told it grows and changes in the telling? Change is the nature of everything.

I remember myself as a child, pudgy and awkward and unsure of myself. For a moment I wonder how anyone could love such a child as that, let alone the woman she promised to become.