I have seen women who thought they loved me look at me that way, and wolves which were hungry. - Tanith Lee

The year was woven on the loom, finished and folded away upon the pile of other years in the tall chests of Time.

It is a phenomenon of such spots that any noise is encapsulated in this ringing stillness, and made strangely tiny, however loud. The shouts of bandits and the squeaks of fauna sound as if confined in bubbles, a symbol of their impermanence. Only the desert endures.

There is, too, a sort of relief in admitting defeat. Struggling to drag a mountain from my path, acknowledging at last the mountain would remain, lying down beneath the mountain, thankful for the shade of it.