Time had changed the magical to mundane

The Law is a grim, unsmiling thing. Not Justice, though. Justice is witty and whimsical and kind and caring.

There didn't seem to her any harm in it, and the make-believe was so comforting.

Loss is essential, loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing and losing again, is the very basis of the process, til all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence.

Birth and death - what could be more monstrous than that? We like to deceive ourselves and call it wondrous and beautiful and majestic, but it's freakish, let's face it.

So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different

...the face has limited space. My mother used to say, if you fill your face with laughing, there will be no more room for crying.