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.

This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it.

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?

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 made a wish on this tree years ago," Marco says. "What did you wish for?" Bailey asks. Marco leans forward and whispers in Bailey's ear. "I wished for her.

And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister's story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead.

It is difficult to see a situation for what it is when you are in the midst of it,” Tsukiko says. “It is too familiar. Too comfortable.