Strength ebbed and flowed, but brittle would break.

Life was about loss. One minute standing on the promise of your dreams, then free-falling backward into nothingness. Is this what it meant to grow old? To gradually be stripped of all you cared about. And then what? Were you supposed to spend the rest of your life, dreaming about the past while you waited to die? Or did you start a new life, set the cycle in motion once again. Take the chance of losing that, too. And if you did, what happened to the old life? Did it die away from lack of attention?

It seemed as if the longer she lived, the more was taken from her. Not gradually, as old age fell into the inevitable, but lobbed off in great chunks, the healthy branches sacrificed along with the frail.

Margaux was older and wiser now and knew the waves couldn't fix what was wrong in her life, but at least they might give her some temporary respite.

Bad memories were hard enough, but it was torture to be haunted by the good.