You're not really in control, not with this falling-for-people stuff. You don't plan who you're going to fall in love with. It's all random - chance accidents of time and place.

Some things get lost others return. That is how it is: the way of things.

There is always that choice, the light or the dark

But you still need the two: the dark and the light. You can't see one without the other.

What i realise now is that the story actually did have a happy ending: the children came back. In spite of everything the adults did to them, the children found their own way home, their pockets full of precious stones and pearls that gleamed and shone in the light.