Michael nodded tersely, eyeing a table across the room. It was empty. So empty. So joyfully, blessedly empty. He could picture himself a very happy man at that table. "Not feeling very conversational this evening, are we?" Colin asked, breaking into his (admittedly tame) fantasies.

I'm not a gentle pony... I promise you, you will have to work to keep your seat.

He stepped toward her, and her heart just ached from it. His face was so handsome, and so dear, and so perfectly wonderfully familiar. She knew the slope of his cheeks, and the exact shade of his eys, brownish near the iris, melting into green at the edge. And his mouth-she knew that mouth, the look of it, the feel of it. She knew his smile, and she knew his frown, and she knew- she knew far to much.

She needed him to be him. Even if he could not be hers.

He smiled, and suddenly she knew that his words were true. Everything would be all right. Maybe not today and maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Tragedy couldn't coexist in a world with one of Colin's smiles.

James - "Are you paying attention or just trying to make me look like an idoit?" Elizabeth - "Oh, I'm definately paying attention. If you look like an idiot it has nothing to do with me.

I don't like your tone," was Violet's standard answer when one of her children was winning an argument.