“We were the only humans - the only forms of life, in fact - for hundreds of miles in each direction, unreaching and unreachable as we rocketed back towards civilisation.”

“They're terrified of us Firefly, all of them are.""Well, good," I replied, forming a tiny ball of flames in my fingertips, which were curled round the handle on the back of the bike. "They should be.”

“I'm a Helian, and you're an Arcan. We're just made that way. I don't think we would ever be able to really understand each other.”

“Poor girl," I said, letting my eyes lock with hers for a moment before turning to face Cin again, weaving my hand possessively around his waist. "This is probably the first time she's ever seen anyone having fun before. I suppose we shouldn't blame her for being jealous.”

“I sat down on the grass and looked up at Brae. He was still shirtless and - although it pained me a little to even think it - it suited him. He was in really good shape and he looked less uptight without it, more relaxed. If it wasn't for his weird silver hair he could have looked perfectly ordinary. Better than ordinary in fact.”

“I forced myself to breathe deeply; perhaps they would have vanished. Perhaps I'd been imagining them because Brae was gone and I was scared without him, and now that he was back I'd feel safe enough again that they would go away. Perhaps it was just paint or something and would have been washed out by the sea spray earlier. I breathed again, feeling much calmer and then, slowly, opened my eyes.”

“I wonder if to be human is to know that we can't ever banish pain and ugliness from the world, only learn from it and create something beautiful and good out of it ...”