“She watches as the blood springs from the cut she's making, but it doesn't change anything. Not this time. She swipes again, deeper. Now she feels pain, but will it be enough?”

“This time the skin seperates and she blinks her way back into the universe, watches the valley fold open, the blood seaming up along the cut and pressing out, blue to red in the air of this world, and as usual the pain springs her into the here and now.”

“She looked deep into the sphere and watched the colors swirl around. As she watched the whirling colors, she could feel herself being drawn into the hypnotic patterns inside the orb. Deeper and deeper into the patterns she fell, forgetting where she was and what she was here for.”

“She carried a knife inside of herself now, one that was always cutting her. She could feel it every time she swallowed, every time her thoughts strayed from the splendor of the wild.”

“Before this trip and all that she'd learned about the three of them, she would have gotten angry or changed the subject. Anything to obscure the pain she felt. Now she knew better. You carried your pain with you in life. There was no outrunning it.”

“She went out and took a last long look at the shabby little library. She knew she would never see it again. Eyes changed after they looked at new things. If in the years to be she were to come back, her new eyes might make everything seem different from the way she saw it now. The way it was now was the way she wanted to remember it.”