We draw our strength from the great oaks of the forest. As they take their nourishment from the soil, and from the rains that feed the soil, so we find our courage in the pattern of living things around us. They stand through storm and tempest. They grow and renew themselves. Like a grove of young oaks, we remain strong.

I wanted so much to keep you safe. I did my best. I'm sorry things didn't come out different for the two of us. I wish I could have been good enough for you.

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.

First person allows deeper insight into the protagonist's character. It allows the reader to identify more fully with the protagonist and to share her world quite intimately. So it suits a story focused on one character's personal journey. However, first person shuts out insights into other characters.

Stronger than iron crueler than death sweeter than springtime it lives beyond breath

This is a long goodbye, yet not time enough. I have no aptitude for this. I cannot learn this. I would hold on, and hold on, until my hands clutch at emptiness.

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.