Beyond the town, darker than dark, King Haggard's castle teetered like a lunatic on stilts.

You have to be very deep to be dead, he thought, and I'm not. He began to have some concept of forever, and his mind shivered as his body had when he had wakened in the cold nights and thrust his hands between his thighs to keep warm. It will be a long night, he thought.

I am a king's daughter, And if I cared to care, The moon that has no mistress Would flutter in my hair. No one dares to cherish What I choose to crave. Never have I hungered, For that I did not have I am a kings daughter, And I grow old within The prison of my person, The shackles of my skin. And I would run away And beg from door to door, Just to see your shadow Once, and never more.

There's a phrase, "sitzfleisch", which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, "If the muse is late for work, start without her". You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you're probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow.

Unicorn. Old French, unicorne. Latin, unicornis. Literally, one-horned: unus, one and cornu,a horn. A fabulous animal resembling a horse with one horn.

What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain-- What is gone is gone.

Envy nobody. It is the true secret of happiness, or at least the only one I know. (By Moonlight)