The smell of loving is a difficult one to describe, but if you think of the times when someone has held you close and made you safe, you will remember how it smells just as well as I do.

You know how we can be about things which sparkle and shine. We imagine they will put back something of what has been lost.

You were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.

That’s what happens to friends, eventually. They leave you. It’s practically what they’re for.

That’s what a map is, you know. Just a memory.

But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized, and can only attract their like.

Oh, but Masha, can’t you see? You are. An Ivan has come. That is like saying, Midnight has struck. It is time for bed, little one. You cannot have both. In war you must always choose sides. One or the other. Silver or black. Human or demon. If you try to be a bridge laid down between them, they will tear you in half.