You can be betrayed in your sleep. The whole world can tilt while you're dreaming of butterflies.

Outside, the September air was enticingly fragrant, yellow with pollen and rich, lemony sunlight.

What I like about fairy tales is the language and the matter-of-fact way of introducing magic, where it's accepted that a fox could talk or a gate could just appear in a wall. I think fairy tales are so psychological.

You don't fight for peace sister,' Nahara told me, 'You embrace it.

Sometimes words drew blood, they cut your tongue, they made you know things you couldn't unknow.

That's the way love sounds, my mother told me. You think it should feel like honey, but instead it cuts like a knife.

Still, I couldn't help but wonder if it was a mistake for people like us to be tied to a place. If we weren't meant to be ready and willing to wander. If everything we needed was contained in who we were. And what we remember.