The company you keep at death is, of all things, most dependent on chance.

Through poverty, godhunger, the family debacle, I kept a sense of worth. I could limn and paint like no-one else in this human-wounded land: I was worth the while of living. Now my skill is dead. I should be.

But hands are sacred things. Touch is personal, fingers of love, feelers of blind eyes, tongues of those who cannot talk.

I have faced Death. I have been caught in the wild weed tangles of Her hair, seen the gleam of her jade eyes. I will go when it is time - no choice! - but now I want life.

Why? is the boy's motto, why does, why is, why not? Food, weather, time, fires, sea and season, clothes and cars and people; it's all grist to the mill of why.

Wars of small kingdoms and forgotten lands, what do chessmen dream of in the dark?

A family can be the bane of one's existence. A family can also be most of the meaning of one's existence. I don't know whether my family is bane or meaning, but they have surely gone away and left a large hole in my heart.