The old man looks out at the smears of rain vibrating on the window glass. His smile fades. “But Arthur, there is hope.” The great author quietly says:

then a castaway in the wide ocean of possibility,

Realizing we are no longer in love is not the heartbreaking sensation we imagine when we are in love—because it is no sensation at all. It is a realization made by a bystander.

A satisfied curl of the lip that is not for work done, and well done, but for doing a thing that has never been done.

You may think: What’s happened? Good God, are they kidding? But it is a rule of life, alas, that nobody is kidding.

That’s all we have. We must celebrate them. Remember that. I don’t care who you love, but if you love someone…if you love someone, you have to love them every day. You have to choose them every day.”

Less realizes he has made the sound himself. For the dead live only in us.

within this nested set of Vlads, completely concealed, is Vlad himself, carved from a single piece of wood, Vlad the Lad: the nut Dorothy is searching for.

Only a fraction of the old magic remains, and impostors are everywhere!”