Oh, There Was Harm Indeed

True Love, It's Like An Illness. I Never Understood It Before. In Books And Plays. Poems. I Never Understood What Drove Otherwise Intelligent, Right-thinking People To Do Such Extravagant, Irrational Things. Now I Do. It's An Illness. You Can Catch It When You Least Expect. There's No Known Cure. And Sometimes, In Its Most Extreme, It's Fatal.

And Then He Was Kissing Her, And She Was Struck By His Nearness, His Solidity, His Smell. It Was Of The Garden And The Earth And The Sun. When Cassandra Opened Her Eyes, She Realized She Was Crying. She Wasn't Sad, Though, These Were The Tears Of Being Found, Of Having Come Home After A Long Time Away.

It Didn't Occur To Him That She Might Have Chosen To Remain This Way. That Where He Saw Reserve And Loneliness, Cassandra Saw Self-preservation And The Knowledge That It Was Safer When One Had Less To Lose.

You Must Learn To Know The Difference Between Tales And The Truth, My Liza, She Would Say. Fairy Tales Have A Habit Of Ending Too Soon. They Never Show What Happens Afterwards When The Prince And Princess Ride Off The Page.

In Retrospect, It Seems Like Everything In My Life Led To Me Becoming A Writer. I Just Didn't Realise It At The Time.