In real life, things don't all end at the nice same place. To keep the story real, there has to be kind of a ragged edge at the end of a novel.

One had a knife. But I had a staff and was trained to use it.

Locked into loneliness were we two and looking at one another every evening we each saw the one we blamed for it.

I think that old magic draws much of its strength from that acknowledgment: that we are a part of that world.

Ah, Beloved. Of all the things I must bid farewell to, you are the most difficult to lose. Forgive me that I have avoided you. Better, perhaps, that we make a space between us and become accustomed to it before fate forces that upon us.

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.

Writers really do that. We weep over our characters. We are saddened sometimes for days when we say goodbye to a world or a character. They do become our best friends. I've probably spent more time with them over the past 22, 24 years than I have spent with most of the real members of my family.