The beautiful know they have power, and she had, in her diminutive charm, a certain power of which she was always casually aware.

Drink." she whispered, drawing nearer. "Drink." she held the soft, tender flesh of the wrist towards me. "No. I know what to do; haven't I done it in the past?" I said to her.

It's an awful truth that suffering can deepen us, give a greater lustre to our colours, a richer resonance to our words.

We live forever; but they don't come back.

I hear the birds singing. Listen. I hear them in their cage. The others-all our kind who know of her-they think of her as heartless, but she wasn't heartless. She was only aware of things which I didn't learn till so many decades had passed. She knew secrets that only suffering can teach...

To be human, that's what most of us long for. It is the human which has become myth to us.