When people first discover beauty, they tend to linger. Even if they don’t at first recognize it for what it is.

Memory warps time, as it does the sights and sounds and smells of reality; for what shapes it is emotion, which can twist what seems clear, just as the surface of a pond seems to bend the stick thrust into the water.

Except. What is normal at any given time? We change just as the seasons change, and each spring brings new growth. So nothing is ever quite the same.

Female authors were still using male names when I was young, or they were neatly shoehorned into womens books except for those few that men could always point at when the disparity was pointed out.

One doesn't lose a self, like a pair of gloves or a pine. We learn and change, or we harden into stone.

They're safe,'' he said. "And you're not made of glass". He swept me up in his arms. I laughed. "And I'm not made of glass." He carried me into our room and kicked the door shut behind us.

I had seen ardency in men's eyes, but I had only felt it once. With Flauvic, false and therefore easy to dismiss. I suddenly wished that I could feel it now. No, I did feel it. I did have the same feeling, only I had masked it as restlessness, or as the exhortation to action, or as anger. I thought how wonderful it would be to see that spark now, in the right pair of eyes.