With the infinite patience of one who has learned to live broken, he awaited her return.

Is it good or bad?" she asked Issa. The wrong question, she knew. She just couldn't help herself. "It's both, sweet girl," said Issa. "like everything.

All right," sighed Madrigal. "To the baths, then. To make ourselves shiningly clean." Like vegetable, she thought, before they go in the stew.

The audacity to love. Do you know what a gift that is?

Then there were things-- epic, terrible things-- that he didn't tell her but skirted around, like caressing the edges of a wound, hesitant, testing for pain.

A man once said, 'All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.' Mark Twain, you know. He had a fine mustache. Men of wisdom so often do.

It was a bold, wild life for a faerie - most never even left their forests - but she was a bold, wild lass, and so were her daughter and granddaughter after her, and their place in the world was everywhere and nowhere, like gypsies on wing. No home had they but their caravans and campfires, and no family but the one they'd cobbled together of crows, creatures and kindred souls they'd met on their endless journey round and round the world.