A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct. - Frank Herbert

The old woman was a witch shadow — hair like matted spiderwebs, hooded ’round darkness of features, eyes like glittering jewels.

Whirling silence settled around Jessica. Every fiber of her body accepted the fact that something profound had happened to it. She felt that she was a conscious mote, smaller than any subatomic particle, yet capable of motion and of sensing her surroundings. Like an abrupt revelation — the curtains whipped away — she realized she had become aware of a psychokinesthetic extension of herself. She was the mote, yet not the mote.

Better a dry morsel and quietness therewith than a house full of sacrifice and strife.