Keep what you hold in your heart safe and strong.

Oswald: "All your life" Aurore: "What?" Oswald: "All your life, isn't that what you wanted to know? How long I loved you?" Aurore: "Well, yes, I suppose I did, but that wasn't what I was going to ask just now." Oswald: "I tell you I've loved you since the day you were born, and you tell me you want to know something else. There's no one quite like you, is there, Aurore?

That is what love is I thought. A possibility that becomes a choice. A choice you keep making over and over. Day after day. Year after year. Time after time.

How much easier my life would be if I did not love you! I thought. How much less painful, but how much plainer. How much less color there would be in the world.

In spite of myself, I gave a snort. "Just once, I'd like to hear a simple, straightforward prophecy.

Love so joyfully and freely given can never be taken away. It is never truly gone.

It took two," I said. "Two different people to make the Heartwood what it is. Two different experiences, grief and joy, combined. True love never has just one face, does it? It must always have two, or it isn't true love at all.