It was one thing not to want a husband, I realized it was quite another not to need one for the roof over your head, for your meat and bread, for the shoes on your feet and the coat on your back.

Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to.

How different other families were, the shape of them, the things they presumed, the children that grew up in them.

You are pure-hearted and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart.

Why must we climb away to the seal-less parts of the world?