To me, the truth is what actually happened. Yet it is impossible to know anything approaching the whole truth about past events. Even the people livi… - Orson Scott Card

First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left?

“You must be a prophet right enough,” said Alvin Junior, “cause I can’t understand a thing you said.”

Something had been given back to him. And because [she] had been a part of it, there was something between them now. A bond of loss, if loss could bind.