One-winged angels, she thought. Perhaps that is what love makes us. To fly, we have to embrace each other.

There were many things she could have said, but we forget to forge armor against the knife-thrusts of our loved ones.

He wasn't the sort of person you interacted with and fluttered away from; he was the type of man you fell for. People got hurt when they got attached to other people, because people always left or were taken away. Falling in love, therefore, was just a set-up for inevitable failure. She knew all this. But logic is fallacy when it spars with instinct. So she fell anyway.

The butterflies were performing circus tricks now, flying through hoops of fire. Lexi had read about infatuation once. Some writer had doused the romantic notion of winged insects. He'd said the funny feeling was simply the motion of common sense fleeing the body. It made more sense, in a world where few things did. Lexi smiled, reveling in the feeling.