Oh, the boots were on the other eight feet now.

Literature offers the thrill of minds of great clarity wrestling with the endless problems and delights of being human. To engage with them is to engage with oneself, and the lasting rewards are not confined to specific career paths.

What was it that drew you back? My marvellous personality, I suppose? Or my sparkling conversation?

Hey, we've all got problems, chum. I'm overly talkative. You look like a field of buttercups in a suit.

That did it. I'd gone through a lot in the past few days. Everyone I met seemed to want a piece of me: djinn, magicians, humans...it made no difference.I'd been summoned, manhandled, shot at, captured, constricted, bossed about and generally taken for granted. And now, to cap it all, this bloke is joining in too, when all I'd been doing was quietly trying to kill him.

That's a gesture of endearment in some cultures. Some hug, some kiss, some set each other on fire in small patches of woodland

A typical master. Right to the end, he didn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgeways. Which is a pity, because at that last moment I’d have liked to tell him what I thought of him. Mind you, since in that split second we were, to all intents and purposes, one and the same, I rather think he knew anyway.