Why should I be polished and improved like goods for sale? I might not even want to marry! And besides, I have many skills. I can read and write and play the flute and harp. Why should I change to please some man? If he doesn’t like me the way I am, then he can get some other girl for his wife.

Death, of course, should not be feared, but awaited with certain wonder. To die was to step across a threshold into a new world, unknown, unimaginable.

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.

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.

Why should I be polished and improved like goods for sale? I might not even want to marry! And besides, I have many skills. I can read and write and play the flute and harp. Why should I change to please some man? If he doesn’t like me the way I am, then he can get some other girl for his wife.

Only - only that, if you believe the tales, it's in the nature of our people to go to war and to kill, just as it is to sing and play and tell stories. Perhaps they are two halves of the same whole.

I've loved fairytales, folklore and mythology since I was a small child, and I think it was inevitable that they would influence my style and my development of stories.