Rhonda, I cannot say enough good things about your writing. Characters always feel authentic even if they're in a paranormal setting. You take the most improbable events and peculiar people, pull us into their bodies, immerse us in their lives. You make their world so convincing, I blink in wonder when I look up from the page and my own familiar world now looks alien to me. What am I doing HERE, when I wannabe THERE with Amalynde? Then again, there's that terrifying, vivid, evocative and wondrous final line, with Amalynde screaming that name, and I tell myself it's good to be safe at home in my own bed. Yes. It's good that I can board the good ship Amalynde, get tossed and nearly shipwrecked in the storm, then disembark, safe and warm and dry, with no arcachno-spider-beings whose jaws can crunch metal and no Nanomancer coming to burn down my house and kill my family and even --EEP!--all the animal companions. SPLENDID,@rhondak, splendid!