They weren't nice words he said. He could've lived a good life and died never having made a person feel rubbed down to bones and too sad to hold together.

I let my head fall back, and I gazed into the Eternal Blue Sky. It was morning. Some of the sky was yellow, some the softest blue. One small cloud scuttled along. Strange how everything below can be such death and chaos and pain while above the sky is peace, sweet blue gentleness. I heard a shaman say once, the Ancestors want our souls to be like the blue sky.

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.

He nodded. "And if I don't make you feel like the most beautiful woman in the world every day of your life, then I don't deserve to be near you.

Over there!" "Where?" Enna asked in mock panic "Do you see something?

Finn, do you see the lias—whatever, the orange-haired girl?” Razo Gestured ahead. “Do you think she’s pretty?” Finn glanced Dasha’s way, then returned his attention ot his horse. “She’s all right.” “Really? Just all right?” Finn shrugged. Razo rolled his eyes. “What am I saying? He doesn’t think any girl is pretty but Enna.” “Are there any girls but Enna?” Finn called back. “There’d better be.

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