Sometimes, Tiffany thought, I am so fed up with being young.

Tiffany knew what the problem was immediately. She'd seen it before, at
birthday parties. Her brother was suffering from tragic sweet
deprivation. Yes, he was surrounded by sweets. But the moment he took any
sweet at all, said his sugar-addled brain, that meant he was not taking
all the rest. And there were so many sweets he'd never be able to eat
them all. It was too much to cope with. The only solution was to burst
into tears.

Tiffany has been apprenticing as a witch by visiting people in need with her mentor. After meeting with one particularly sad case, she tells her mentor, "It shouldn't be like this." Her mentor replies, "There isn't a way things should be. There's just what happens, and what we do.

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.

That's Third Thoughts for you. When a huge rock is going to land on your head, they're the thoughts that think: Is that an igneous rock, such as granite, or is it sandstone?

Don't wish, Miss Tick had said. Do things.