What I wonder is, maybe the world is growing older. Less all alive. Or is it only my growing older?” “Everybody always wonders that. I don’t think, r… - John Crowley

So few of us, she thought, so much love and so few to spend it on, no wonder we get tangled up.

There are seven windows in the Queen's bedroom in the Citadel that is the center of the City that is on the lake island called the Hub in the middle of the world.
Two of the seven windows face the tower stones and are dark; two overlook inner courtyards; two face the complex lanes that wind between the high, blank-faced mansions of the Protectorate; and the seventh, facing the steep Street of the Birdsellers and, beyond, a crack in the ring of the mountains across the lake, is always filled at night with stars. When wind speaks in the mountains, it whispers in this window, and makes the fine brown bed hangings dance.

"In the last month of winter," she began, almost as though she were talking only to the cat at her feet, "which is the first of spring, the ice on the river, which had been solid and could bear weight, broke up and floated away in great clashing chunks, which makes a pretty sight.

"The ice asked: How is it that the river could accomplish such a thing? And the river might answer: Ice set itself a task it could not finish, and all that was left undone remained the river; and for the undoing of what you did do, well, it wasn't I at all but time and changes, and I am left.