She'd become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she'd taken to it well. She'd sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she'd beat herself to death with her own umbrella.

I should have learned this, she thought. I wanted to learn fire, and pain, but I should have learned people.

You can't trample infidels when you're a tortoise. I mean, all you could do is give them a meaningful look.

Corporal Nobbs had been disqualified from the human race for shoving

Guilt was the grease in which the wheels of the authority turned.

The worst thing you can do is nothing.

At such times the universe gets a little closer to us. They are strange times, times of beginnings and endings. Dangerous and powerful. And we feel it even if we don't know what it is. These times are not necessarily good, and not necessarily bad. In fact, what they are depends on what *we* are.