I ran from him. But he found me and bound me with an obligation, which binds my kind more securely than any… — Neil Gaiman

Every boy in the village was in love with Victoria Forester. And many a sedate gentleman, quietly married with grey in his beard, would stare at her as she walked down the street, becoming, for a few moments, a boy once more, in the spring of his years with a spring in his step.

"And if I brought you the fallen star?" asked Tristran lightly. "What would you give me? A kiss? Your hand in marriage?"

"Anything you desire", said Victoria, amused.

Few of us now have seen the stars as folk saw them then — our cities and towns cast too much light into the night — but, from the village of Wall, the stars were laid out like worlds or like ideas, uncountable as the trees in a forest or the leaves on a tree. Tristan would stare into the darkness of the sky until he thought of nothing at all, and then he would go back to his bed, and sleep like a dead man.