The Last Light of the Sun

by Guy Gavriel Kay

Earthly pleasures: an old friend, food and wine, a day with some good unexpectedly done.

He’d ripped the skein of that destiny himself:

A hard truth: that courage can be without meaning or impact, need not be rewarded, or even known. The world has not been made in that way. Perhaps, however, within the self there might come a resonance, the awareness of having done something difficult, of having done . . . something. That can ripple, might do so, though in a different way.

The past, what we have done or not done, slips and flows, like a stream to a carved-out channel, into the things we do years after. It is never safe, or wise, to say that anything is over.

Some paths, some doorways, some people were not to be yours, though the slightest difference in the rippling of time might have made them so.