As I apologized to her a flicker of panic raced through me and then faded away. There wasn't enough life left in me to panic. I'd made a mistake and I was dying. Apparently not even a Speck afterlife was available to me. I'd simply stop being. Apparently I hadn't died correctly. Oops.

Sometimes it seemed to me a cruelty that so much was unresolved between us; at other times, a blessing that a hope of reunion lingered.

The biggest doubts come in the five minutes after I hit send.

Not being able to think of a reply is not the same thing as accepting another's words.

No. This is right. I feel it. I am the Catalyst, and I came to change all things. Prophets become warriors, dragons hunt as wolves. Fitz in Assassin's Quest

How different would our perception of reality be if... we discarded the mundane events that cannot coexist with our dreams?

It was hard to reconcile the drumbeats and lifted voices in the night with my memories of flames and the screams of dying men. How could humanity range so effortlessly from the sublime to the savage and back again?