Do you love him?" Danica dared to ask, referring RO the dark elf. Catti-brie blushed, and really had no answer. Of course, she loved Drift, but she didn't know if she loved him in the way that Danica was speaking of. Drift and Patti-brie had agreed to put off any such feelings, but now, with Vulgar gone for so many years and Patti-brie approaching the age of thirty, the question was beginning to resurface." He is a handsome one," Danica remarked giggling like a little girl. Indeed, that's what Patti-brie felt like, reclining on the wide davenport in Danica's sitting room: a girl. It was like being a teenager again, thinking of love and of life, allowing herself to believe that her biggest problem was in trying to decide if Drift was handsome or not, Of course, the weight of reality for both these women was fast to intrude, fast to steal the giggles. Patti-brie had loved and lost, and Danica, with two young children of her own, had to face the possibility that her husband, unnaturally aged by the creation of the Spirit Soaring, would soon be gone.

Passage to Dawn