For one thing, everyone there is so clever. Do they think me dull? Perhaps I should assure them that our goats enjoyed listening to me for hours on end. I am certain their bleats meant "Do go on, Miri, darling. You are immensely entertaining." Your immensely entertaining sister, Miri

Time is a wind that keeps blowing in my face and mumbling words that don't make sense.

Poor gosling. It hurts to be lost. And worse to be home with no kind of homecoming...I'll be lucky if I can do as well as you when all this's done, just a bit out of breath, a bit bruised and scratched, a bit wiser and sadder for it all.

They laughed much harder than the memory was funny because it felt good to laugh.

Her eyes were distant, and she seemed to be listening to that voice that first told her the story, a mother, sister, or aunt. Then her voice, like her singing, cut through the crickets and crackling fire.

She touched the healthy folds of skin around the baby's neck, wrists, and thighs, the dark lines crying for life made in his forehead, and thought how people start with wrinkles and end with wrinkles, grow into their skin and then live to grow out of it again.

You, what are you? The brat of lucky parents who were related to a childless king. There is no such thing as royal blood. I believe we are what we make ourselves, and as such, you, Crown Princess, are nothing.