To Gerda with the promise of sand, surf and a Scootie of our own
To see what we have never seen,
to be what we have never been,
to shed the chrysalis and fly,
depart the earth, kiss the sky,
to be reborn, be someone new:
is this a dream or is it true?
Can our future be cleanly shorn
from a life to which we’re born?
Is each of us a creature free –
or trapped at birth by destiny?
Pity those who believe the latter.
Without freedom, nothing matters.
–The Book of Counted Sorrows
In the real world as in dreams nothing is quite what it seems.
–The Book of Counted Sorrows
Out of a cloudless sky on a windless November day came a sudden shadow that swooped across the bright aqua Corvette. Tommy Phan was standing beside the car, in pleasantly warm autumn sunshine, holding out his hand to accept the keys from Jim Shine, the salesman, when the fleeting shade touched him. He heard a brief thrumming like frantic wings. Glancing up, he expected to glimpse a sea gull, but not a single bird was in sight.
Unaccountably, the shadow had chilled him as though a cold wind had come with it, but the air was utterly still. He shivered, felt a blade of ice touch his palm, and jerked his hand back, even as he realized, too late, that it wasn’t ice but merely the keys to the Corvette. He looked down in time to see them hit the pavement.
