Johnny was sobbing in shuddering gasps, telling me his small tale of woe, that the world was suddently different, and that he wanted me to make it better, right now please." --Liadan's interpretation of her baby's cries.

Every man or woman who makes a stand helps keep the flame of freedom burning.

How can he do this? If you were mine, I would fight to keep you. I would die, before I let you go.

She seemed fragile like a moonflower – destined to bloom for a single lovely night, and then to fade and fall.

For indeed you have a choice. You can flee and hide, and wait to be found. You can live out your days in terror, without meaning. Or you can take the harder choice, and you can save them.

A wonder tale can be truer than true," I said. I had learned (...) that the deepest kind of truth can be found in the strangest and wildest of stories. One may not meet a fire-breathing dragon on the way to the well. One may not encounter an army of toothed snakes in the woodshed. That does not make the wisdom in those tales any less real.

Even in that time of utter darkness, somewhere deep inside me the memory of love and goodness had stayed alive.