“I'm not myself," she offered, guiltily. She softened around Tik Tok, and when she did she was, for those rare moments, girlish.He smiled. "You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.”

“I'm not myself.' '...You can never say that. You're just a piece of yourself right now that you don't like.”

“Hear you're training again," she says. "For the Capriani Cup.""Who told-""You did," she says. "Just now.”

“Oh I'm sure you're right," Auntie said. "Probably she's just as you say. But she looks to me like a very clever girl, and adaptable; you can see that from the shape of her ears.”

“Now there are days when she is content, and days when she’s restless. But there is never a day when she doesn’t see Peter everywhere. Things hurt, and don’t hurt, and hurt again. Eighty years later, and she can still feel surprised that he’s gone. And then so much of the time, she’s glad. But just as she looks for Tik Tok in everything around her, she looks for Peter in the woods, out gathering, in the lagoon, in the burrow that is now abandoned. She goes up on the cliffs from time to time and stands there for hours, continuing her long good-bye. It’s not for lack of loyalty to her husband. It is just that she was fifteen once for the first time, and Peter walked across her heart, and left his footprints there.”

“Hey Rid?"She stopped and turned to look at him, almost ruefully. Like she couldn't help what she was any more then a shark could help being a shark, but if she could..."Yeah, Shrinky Dink?""You're not all bad."She looked right at him and almost smiled. "You know what they say. Maybe I'm just drawn that way.”