My heart shoots into my throat every time I think I see his loping walk, or catch sight of some floppy brown hair on a boy - but it's never him, and each time it isn't, my heart does a reverse trajectory down into the very pit of my stomach.

I was glad when the invalids were executed

Snapshots, moments, mere seconds: as fragile and beautiful and hopeless as a single butterfly, flapping on against a gathering wind.

And when I wake up it's wonderful, like I've been carried quietly onto a calm, peaceful shore, and the dream, and its meaning, has broken over me like a wave and is ebbing away now, leaving me with a single, solid certainty. I know now.

I am growing stronger. I am a stone being excavated by the slow passage of water; I am wood charred by a fire.

Here's another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you're dead, it's the only thing that keeps you alive.

When he speaks again, I can tell that he's smiling. "So I guess we saved each other.