Cure" is one of the most precious words in the English language. It's a short word. A clean and simple word. But it isn't so easy a thing as it sounds. There are questions like: How will this affect us in ten years? In twenty? What will it do to our children? Our children's children?

You can try to please everyone and risk accomplishing nothing, or go for your dreams and risk pissing a few people off.

I nod like I'm not at all unnerved by this new cold side to him. Not cruel like his father. Not warm like the husband who sought me out on quiet nights. Something in between. This Linden has never woven his fingers through mine, never chosen me from a line of weary Gathered girls, never said he loved me in a myriad of coloured lights. We are nothing to each other.

We figure out what death means when we're born, practically, and we live our whole lives in some kind of weird denial about it.

I watch the ashes swim around like dandelion puffs, making swirls where bodies and walls once stood.

Childhood is a long, long road, from which that dark whispering forest of death seems an impossible destination.

My worries always lead to dungeons; I can't imagine a worse thing than to be imprisoned for the rest of one's life, especially with so few years to enjoy what little there is.