A wager?" I repeated. "Yes," he said, and gave me a slow smile, bright with challenge. ... "Stake?" I asked cautiously. He was still smiling, an odd sort of smile, hard to define. "A kiss." My first reaction was outrage, but then I remembered that I was on my way to Court, and that had to be the kind of thing they did at Court. And if I win I don't have to collect. I hesitated only a moment longer, lured by the thought of open sky, and speed, and winning. "Done," I said.

The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of humans.

Because you showed one face to all the rest of the world, and another to me.

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.

Finally someone takes me seriously enough to ask for my word of honor, and it’s a villain.

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.

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