And new, too. Remade. Ready to move again. Listening was the start, she decided. Doing was the next step.

If you're listening Big Brother, I refuse to be Fanny Price.

I keep thinking about a tale my nurse used to read to me about a bird whose wings are pinned to the ground. In the end, when he finally frees himself, he flies so high he becomes a star. My nurse said the story was about how we all have something that keeps us down.

Ani felt a stirring, a hope, a winged thing waking up in her chest and brushing her heart with it's feathers.

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.

...all things speak, in their way, don't they?

Am I the moss on your bark, then?" Ani asked. Enna grabbed her around the waist and shook her affectionately. "You're the mossiest girl I know.