Things don't ever stay the same. Natural beginnings come to natural or unnatural ends.

I'll teach you how to defend yourself, how to maim a man. We can use Po as a model.' 'Wonderful,' Po said. 'It's quite boring really, the way you beat me to death with your hands and feet, Katsa. It'll be refreshing to have you come at me with a knife.

It was a very hard thing to have crushed the heart, and the hopes, of a friend.

I think.' she said, 'that sometimes we don't feel the things that we are. But others can feel them.

She expected the pain, when it came. But she gasped at its sharpness; it was not like any pain she had felt before. He kissed her and slowed and would have stopped. But she laughed, and said that this one time she would consent to hurt, and bleed, at his touch. He smiled into her neck and kissed her again and she moved with him through the pain. The pain became a warmth that grew. Grew, and stopped her breath. And took her breath and her pain and her mind away from her body, so that there was nothing but her body and his body and the light and fire they made together.

Why are you still here?" she asked. "Shouldn't you be in a cave somewhere inspiring people?

The more I see and hear, the more I realize how much I don't know.