Could you do such things when you were a dancer?' Tara asks her, as Tsukiko pulls a leg up impossibly far over her head. 'I would have had a much busier social calendar if I could,' Mme. Padva replies with a shake of her head.

But you built me dreams instead.

„I forgive you for stealing my shawl.“ She smiles as he laughs. And then she vanishes. A simple trick of distracting his attention long enough to slip out through the hall, despite the lingering temptation to stay.

Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. The future is never set in stone, remember that.

Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon . . . is not the dragon the hero of his own story?

Taking his time, as though he has all of it in the world, in the universe, from the days when tales meant more than they do now, but perhaps less than they will someday, he draws a breath that releases the tangled knot of words in his heart, and they fall from his lips effortlessly. "The circus arrives without warning.

He remembers when he was very small his mother once said she wished happiness and adventure for him. If this does not count as adventure, he is not sure what does.