I know, when we are young we cannot entertain the idea another's feelings can be as deep as our own. Our love is so much loftier, our pain so much more intense.

Some love comes like the wind off the sea, while others grow slowly from the seeds of friendship and kindness." - Carline

All the way home, his wound pulsing with every hearbeat, he had cursed himself for a fool. How could he think she loved him? He had never been loved in his life, save perhaps by Erik and the other men who had served with him across the sea, and that was the love of comrades. He had never known the love of women, just their embrace. Twice he had found tears running down his face...

Love doesn’t demand; it accepts. It has taken me my life to learn this.

But for the most part, love is a recognition, an opportunity to say, 'There is something about you I cherish.

Among our people we have the recognition, the sudden knowledge that a mate is before you. Not all our people know this certainty, and to them falls the difficult task of slowly building a bond with another who has also not known the recognition. With Calis and Elien, it is the difficult way. But often it ends in a love as profound as the first.

she fills a dark and cold place within me as no one else has.”“If it is still dark and cold when she is not with you, it is not truly filled.