With respect," said Red, and his voice had gone so quiet people hushed each other to hear him, "my tale is yet unfinished; you should hear me out. And it is her answer I have come to hear, not yours.

You will find the way, daughter of the forest. Through grief and pain, through many trials, through betrayal and loss, your feet will walk a straight path.

My feet will tread soft as a deer in the forest. My mind will be clear as water from the sacred well. My heart will be strong as a great oak. My spirit will spread an eagle's wings, and fly forth.

With courage and hope, we can conquer our fears and do what we once believed impossible.

There was so much of beauty here: the neat, small tracks of a foraging creature, stoat or marten; the inticate tracery of a skeleton leaf, still clinging vainly to its parent tree as, little by little, time stripped it of its substance, leaving only the delicate remembrance of what it had been.

As for religious faith, a lack of it shouldn't stop us from doing good deeds for their own sake.

The warmth of his embrace soaked into me, a powerful charm against the dark things.