Your head will be fine,” said Miri. “It’s your neck you should worry about.

I am not sure I am ready to know what I think about that, so I dare not write it out.

... until Miri could not help it any longer and she laughed out loud. The sound broke the game. Peder looked at her. He reached out, and she thought he meant to grab her straw or perhaps yank her hair as he used to when they were little. But her put his hand behind her head and, leaning forward, pulled her face to his. He kissed her. One long, slow kiss.

I always knew it was ill-fated, but he truly believed I would be his bride. I guess I'd never realized that before. He had taken my mucker hand and looked at my mottled face and believed we would wed. And he hadn't seemed sorry. In fact, he'd swooped me up in a corridor and kissed me. That set me to crying.

She's as fetching as brown hair done up with ribbons blue The mountain, my lady She's as sweet as pink flowers made bright with morning dew, Mount Eskel, my lady

Here's the thing about home: you can create it most anywhere, as long as you gather your people around you.

But when she turned her back to the lights, she saw that the night was so dark...She could not see the stars. The world felt as high as the depthless night sky and deeper than she could know. She understood, suddenly and keenly, that she was too small to run away, and she sat on the damp ground and cried.