Eyes open, then," I say, tapping the skin between my eyebrows. I don’t really need her eyes to be on mine, but I feel better when they are.

Everything - our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles - is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one.

Now she looks pale and small, but her eyes make me think of wide- open skies that I have never actually seen, only dreamed of.

You sadistic pansycake.

All that land is filled with people, every one of them different, and the things they do to each other matter.

He holds my face in both hands and kisses me back. I press into the distance between us until it is gone, crushing the secrets we have kept and the suspicions we have harbored-for good, I hope.

Where's Marcus, Destroyer of Lives, going to meet us?