“And there is the girl. When I first see her and her dun mare from my vantage point on the cliff road, I am struck first not by the fact that she is a girl, but by the fact that she's in the ocean. it's the dreaded second day, the day people start to die, and no one will get close to the surf. But there she is, trotting up to the knee in the water. Fearless.”

“There is nothing special about the mare, nothing at all. A fine enough head, good enough bone. As a pony, she is a beauty. As a capall uisce, she is nothing. The girl too, is nothing special - slight, with a ginger ponytail. She looks less afraid than her mare, but she's in more danger.”

“I fell for her in summer, my lovely summer girl,From summer she is made, my lovely summer girl,I’d love to spend a winter with my lovely summer girl,But I’m never warm enough for my lovely summer girl,It’s summer when she smiles, I’m laughing like a child,It’s the summer of our lives; we’ll contain it for a whileShe holds the heat, the breeze of summer in the circle of her handI’d be happy with this summer if it’s all we ever had.”

“The piebald mare paws at the sand; I see her digging out of the corner of my eye and hear her grinding her teeth. That bridle's her curse, this island her prison. She still smells of rot.”

“I hear one of my mares scream, and I turn long enough to flip open my bag and throw a handful of salt in her direction. She jerks her head up as some of it sprinkles her face; she's offended but not hurt...I turn back to the sea, and the wind throws sand in my face, hard enough to offend but not to hurt. I smile a thin smile at the irony and turn up my collar.”

“She is my mare and my best friend, and I keep waiting for something bad to happen to her, because I love her too much.”

“I am an equation that only she solves, These X's and Y's by other names called, My way of division is desperatley flawed, while I multiply days without her.”