This is all so secret, so sacred, and I do not know if I can bear to share it with anyone else. I am my wedding gown--fragile, flimsy, ephemeral--the ash smudges that are my music will fade and disappear with time.

A candle unused is nothing but wax and wick. I would rather light the flame, knowing it will go out, than sit forever in darkness.

The question struck him in the chest, spreading through his throat and face like the blush of dawn. With life and color to his features, he looked once more like the austere young man in the portrait gallery: young, idealistic, and vulnerable.

You called me selfless, so I claim selfishness. Because for once, I want to love myself best, instead of last.

But he said nothing after that, only her name, as if her name were not a name but a question. Or perhaps that wasn't how he had said it, and she was wrong, and she'd heard a question simply because the sound of him speaking her name made her wish that she were his answer.

Its colors were hallucinatory, and Kestrel found herself thinking that pink was colder than orange, and yellow not much better.

He knew the law of such things: people in brightly lit places cannot see into the dark.

"In a manner of speaking," he sighed. "After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents--a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life."

Where humans were concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure; and sorrow, for the hopelessness of it all.

There was no whirring helicopter this time. But on the horizon, floating towards the field, was a huge hot-air balloon. The canopy of orange, white, and green drifted across the cloudless blue sky in the silence of a dream.