I like that "once upon a time" quality, where the telling of a tale has an elevated sense of story. There's a whimsical quality to it. Sometimes in fairy tales more things seem possible, even though often they're real world based.

Her father picks different names for her as they change locales, but he uses Miranda often, presumably because he knows how much it annoys her.

I do not like sitting idly by when something clearly isn't right. I feel... not trapped but something like it, and I don't know what to about.

Celia laughs and a curl of her hair falls across her cheek. Marco tentatively moves to brush it off her face, but before his fingers reach her, she pushes herself off the ledge, her silver gown a billowing cloud as she falls onto the pile of jewel-toned cushions.

Have you tried the cinnamon things?" Poppet asks. "They're rather new. What are they called, Widge?" "Fantastically delicious cinnamon things?

The boy spends most of his time reading. And writing, of course. He copies out sections of books, writes out words and symbols he does not understand at first but that become intimately familiar beneath his ink-stained fingers, formed again and again in increasingly steady lines.

I draft quickly and then revise, a lot.