QUOTE : She wanted to run to him. To be embraced. To be swept away from this life that, since birth, had been nothing but misery and pain. Unloved and so became unlovable. It was a joke, to be brought to exist and to have that existence be so mean, so far from virtue, like a crippled wasp or a rattler with a broken back. She wanted to run to him and cry like a child and be taken back to that place before life that was so like a world muffled and smothered by snow. But the joke ran deeper than that. She had been hammered by one thing after another until her core was as sharp and steely as the blade of his scythe. She couldn't let him take her any more than an avalanche could turn and flee back up the hill.