The Girl with Borrowed Wings

He had an extraordinarily casual air about him. I'd noticed that before, when he had tossed himself out the window.

I frowned. Evidently, Sangris wasn't a cat who could shape-shift. It was more difficult than that. He was a nothing who occasionally pretended to be a cat. "I wish I could know what it's like for myself, that's all," I said. I felt rather the way a jail inmate would if a bird flew up and shouted through her window bars: This freedom thing? Yeah, not so great.

I used to come here to think," he told me, landing beside the tree. It was so short that my head was only a few inches above his. "Sangris," I said in shock, "you think? When did this start?

Then I got to my feet, and, taking my arms, he drew me out of my picture frame, into the darkness and the heat, to a place where the ground was frighteningly, thrillingly far away, and the sunless sky was burning and trembling all around us.

I rely on a backbone of books and, for the most part, it's enough to keep me quiet, half-drugged with dreams of imaginary worlds.