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.

She had sacrificed her childhood to save her brothers; she loved her family above all else, and her spirits yearned to return home once more, to the wild forest and the land of mystic tales and ancient spirits whence he had taken her. That was the place of her heart, and if he loved her, he must let her go.

But I believe we all have an inner goodness; a little flame that stays alight through the worst of trials.

This is a—a proposal of marriage?” he asked me, and there was the very smallest trace of a smile at the corner of his mouth, something I had never seen before. “I suppose so,” I said, blushing again. “And, as you see, I’m doing it properly, on my knees.” “This would, however, be a partnership of equals you’re offering, I imagine?” “Undoubtedly.” (448-49)

I wonder how it takes you, that moment when everything turns to shadows. - Somerled.

Real life is not quite as it is in stories. In the old tales, bad things happen, and when the tale has unfolded and come to its triumphant conclusion, it is as if the bad things had never been. Life is not as simple as that, not quite.

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