Timing is a sensitive thing.

The silence that falls between them is a comfortable one. He longs to reach over and touch her, but he resists, fearful of destroying the delicate camaraderie they are building. He steals glances instead, watching the way the light falls over her skin. Several times he catches her regarding him in a similar manner, and the moments when she holds his eyes with hers are sublime.

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.

I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared.

Esse quam videri," Celia says. "To be, rather than to seem.

But dreams have ways of turning into nightmares.

We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.