“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.”

“…she felt depressed beyond any thing she had ever known before.”

“They knew each other. He knew her and so himself, for in truth he had never known himself. And she knew him and so herself, for although she had always known herself she had never been able to recognize it until now.”

“she felt that there was a tide within her, moving with the power of the moon and the ocean and the goddess, who had bound them together, rising, cresting within her heart untill she thought that she must weep, or laugh, or both. she felt her world shifting, remaking itself; holding on to all she was and all she known, but creating a space within these things for this man she was holding in her arms, so that he might share it with her, bringing to it all that he was and all that he had known. And in that instant, in the eternity of that kiss, Alayna knew, with a joy that she found frightening even as it encompassed her, that her life would never again be as it had been.”

“The humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.”

“She had felt a collision with him and known that she had wanted this her whole life: to crash for just one moment into another person at such a velocity as to fuse with him.”