When she turned to look back at her life the woman often thought of how unnecessarily complicated it had been. How many lives had been so unnecessarily impacted. But she hadn't had a choice, she told herself. She had been swept up at the very height of her own power by forces far stronger then she was and set on a path that was not of her own choosing. Events had been made to happen, lies had been told and there often hadn't been the time to do anything but react.

Her heart still ached. It pounded with a pain that time had never quite taken the edge off - never would. Some wounds never healed, some memories layered upon memories could never be erased from one's soul. She would never forget the beat of dragon wings opening to catch an updraft, the fiercely determined gaze of a young man and…and a strong hand encasing her own and the way that touch had grounded her - fought and guided her when she had nearly been lost.

Even here, in the elaborate and luxurious library of a castle by the sea, her heart ached. She turned her face to the sun, allowing it to warm her and her aching bones.

"Cousin."

A smile, unbidden and tinted with sadness, came to her face as she turned to look at the only person in her world who knew most, not all, but most of what had happened to her. It had all happened so fast, she thought. In under two years - or was it three? - she had experienced more then she had ever dreamed possible.

"Are you ever going to tell the story?" asked the now grey haired man. "Stories, cousin…we need to tell them. We were the people who lived in the blank white spaces - in the spaces between the words."

"Soon Taren," she said. It had been her reply for so long that she had grown used to people dropping it. But Taren did not, however.

"Tell it now," he said firmly gesturing at an open, blank but bound text where the only words, written in faded ink at the top of the page, were: I'm coming home. I promise.

"Why now?"

"Some stories, Zoe," said Taren very seriously, "will outlast us all. They may even outlast the lands in which they were created."

"Stories have changed," she said dismissively. "And this story isn't black and white, Taren. The ending…the ending isn't happy and things keep overlapping and blurring. It isn't my story anymore or yours or even…"

The man stepped forward, his eyes burned with an intensity the woman, Zoe, had rarely seen in her normally reserved relation. "Stories will never stop being important, Zoe. They can be more important than anything. They make us human, Zoe, more loving and more alive. I was there to, remember. I was there in the end, I saw what you saw."

Zoe turned her gaze to the creamy page, saw the words a much younger self had scribed on the page in a great hurry. She had been so young back then, but she had tried, they all had and she would lying if she didn't say a small part of her was grateful to have known the pain, the loss and the love.

She had known, even then, what the price was: that it would break not only her but everyone else into pieces. Acceptable losses. The wrong thing for the right reasons - or was that the other way around? She had known, always, that it was not whether she could play the game - it was whether she could stop.

"How do I talk about…" Her voice failed, emotion still rising within her despite herself. It made her angry that all it took was a few words to bring her carefully constructed walls down as if they were made of paper, to bring the past roaring back in like a summer storm.

"Him?" supplied Taren. The man's eyes took on a distant look, his face growing thoughtful in the warm sunlight that streamed through the tall windows. "You will know when the time comes," he said at long last. "I don't know how to talk about love - it gets inside you, doesn't it? Doesn't leave you. But its part of this story, such a big part."

"Yes," said Zoe thoughtfully. "I suppose you are right, Taren. Its time. Some things can seem too big, some emotions to huge but I need to try."

Her hand picked up the elaborate feather quill and she unstoppered the lid on a crystal inkwell…


Zoe was lying on a hammock in her mother's flower garden reading a book. It was not often that she indulged in such moments. Neither was it common to find her lying in a hammock drinking lemonade and eating toffee, but today was a rare day and she was determined to enjoy it. Usually her time was taken up by her rigorous academic schedule or soccer or volleyball or fencing or some other activity that her parent's approved of.

One long fingered hand dropped down to the box of toffee, absently selecting a piece.

She was not a particularly attractive girl. Her face was a little too narrow, her eyes a little too sharp and her body was too lean, lacking any soft curves. Her dark hair was thick and unruly and usually forced into a braid or yanked back with a tie. But, for a once, the young woman's face looked relaxed. It lost the slightly pinched, nervous look of completely focused attention that many people found slightly off putting.

Zoe sighed deeply, her eyes leaving the page briefly as she swiped a bead of sweat from her forehead. It was hot and humid. The air was so still and heavy it made the pages stick together.

Another summer, reflected Zoe. She knew she should make more of an effort to keep up with her friends - if she could call them that - but it was far easier not to. Just as it was easier, far easier really, to ignore her parents and their jet-setting life style. To ignore the constant, overarching pressure to succeed. To win.

She had never been what her parents had wanted no matter what grades she achieved or accolades she collected. And she wasn't sure why it didn't bother her more. Her mother lamented to her girl friends over expensive salads that her daughter wasn't a 'girl' but an 'old soul' who didn't have fun and seemed to lack any charm or charisma. A change, Zoe knew, her mother attributed to Zoe turning sixteen although her mother had no idea what had brought about the change. When had things come to seem so dreary? When had her life come to feel like it didn't fit, like it was both constricting and restraining her?

Zoe was approaching her eighteenth birthday, but it felt like it should be her thirtieth. She wasn't sure when she had come to feel so much older than everyone around her. Was it her new boarding school? The summer spent in France with her aunt? In any regard, it was something that had made her both intriguing and annoying to her peers. It felt strange sometimes, as if she was an outsider looking in on her own life. Both amused and bored by the pettiness of it all.

Turning back to the page in front of her, Zoe focused once more on the words. An awkward story, she mused, about a boy and a dragon. But it was a good story despite it all. It had a real edge to it, although her friends thought she was crazy for thinking that all.

Let them read their Great Gatsby and Hamlet, thought Zoe. She wasn't like them. She would find the kernel of honesty and hard grittiness in this tale of a boy and his dragon. Somehow she knew that she could, that she would mark her own path as well as she knew her own name.

Zoe was so engrossed in the book that she didn't notice it; at least not until it was too late. She didn't hear the faint hum or see the way the leaves began shake as if there was a wind blowing. She would often wonder later, like most people who find themselves in similar situations do, what would have happened if she had just shut the book. Would whatever magic was awakening have faded?

Zoe didn't realize what was happening until the book in her hands began to glow. It was not a small shimmer but a brilliant white light that grew and grew until Zoe was blinded by it. She tried to throw it away but before she could act there was a terrible lurch. The world spun and Zoe found herself falling into a tunnel of endless light that was coming from the book.

The magic was pulling her downwards or was it upwards?

Everything was a blur of color and light until it ended quite suddenly. Whatever magic was holding her suddenly let go and Zoe was falling through empty space until she hit hard, cold and quite solid ground. Her head hit something solid and blackness claimed her. Just as she blacked out Zoe thought she heard a faint voice say Good luck little one but it could just have been her imagination.