- in the name of Allah -

From "The Liveship Traders" - Book 1:
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"...Yet when one of you is near, I feel you are woven of the same 
strand as I, that we are but extensions of a segmented life, and 
that together we complete one another. I feel a joy in your 
presence, because I feel my own life wax greater when we are 
close to one another."
Wintrow leaned on the rail, as motionlessly silent as if he were
listening to a blessed poet. She was not looking at him; she did not
need to look at him to see him. Like him, she gazed out across the
harbor to the festive lights of the night market. Even our eyes
behold the same sight, he thought, and his smile widened. There had
been a few occasions when words had so reached into him and
settled their truth in him like roots in rich earth. Some of the very
best teachers in the monastery could wake this awe in him, when
they spoke in simple words a truth that had swum unvoiced inside
him. When her words had faded into the warmth of the summer
night, he replied.
"So may a harp string, struck strongly, awaken its twin, or a pure
high note of a voice set crystal to shimmering as you have wakened
truth in me." He laughed aloud, surprising himself, for it felt as if a
bird, long caged in his chest, had taken sudden flight. "What you
say is so simple, only that we complement one another. I can think
of no reason why your words should so move me. But they do. They
do."
"Something is happening, here, tonight. I feel it."
"As do I. But I don't know what it is."
"You mean you have no name for it," she corrected him. "We both
cannot help but know what this is. We grow. We become."
Wintrow found himself smiling into the night. "We become what?"
he asked of her.
She turned to face him, the chiseled planes of her wooden face
catching the reflected gleam of the distant lights. She smiled up at
him, lips parting to reveal her perfect teeth. "We become us," she
said simply. "Us, as we were meant to be."
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