The snow was too light to stay, the ground too warm to keep it. And the strange spring snow fell only in that golden moment of dawn, the turning of the page between night and day.

... 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.

As a general rule, writing is very inconvenient.

Sometimes my fancy gets to floating inside me, threatening to carry me away like a leaf on a wind. Better to be a stone.

The snow was too light to stay, the ground too warm to keep it. And the strange spring snow fell only in that golden moment of dawn, the turning of the page between night and day.

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.

She was born Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she did not open her eyes for three days.