When can you say that you've won?

She wrote a novel at the end of her life, pouring all her unfulfilled dreams into it, onto her characters, who finally lived how she always desired to.
And with the last proof, she died, having lived a full life.

My great grandmother said that there are just some things you love irrationally. I never really knew the sort of irrational love that she spoke of.

I never really knew her, except through her book. To me she is as fixed as her characters, yet I can see the truth in what she wrote. In her stories she was Alena Tiersen. Alena, the girl with so much depth you could see the universe in her eyes. Alena, the conduit for one with words but no voice.

"Sometimes I feel as if I am more in love with the feelings that ride alongside love. The love itself matters. Oh my, how it matters! But maybe because I seem to feel things more intensely than others, the feelings just seem to have more prominence. When I hear a beautiful song, it breaks my heart to a point of physical aching. The passion I have seems to have limits beyond my own capacity. I find I cannot do things in halves. If I love, I have to love with all of my heart, with all of my being. If I feel joy, or sadness, or anger, it consumes me. But if I didn't feel these things, would I still exist? Would I, with the passions of a more temperate being, still cast the same shadow, or would I be a whisper, a breath of my former self?"

"I find that I'm scared of a lot of things about myself. I'm afraid of the glimpses of power that show itself, yet only in so far as knowing that the greater the power, the larger the failure. I'm afraid of my capacity to love, yet only for the fear that it could be turned against me. I'm afraid of the responsibilty that comes with talent, that the expectations of greatness might exceed my ability. I'm afraid of the dimensions of my own mind, that my intellect and my imagination will one day break my own heart through reason, supposition and presumptuous untruths. But with all of these things it is the knowledge that beyond the fear I am capable beyond measure."

Sometimes I feel like there was a whole world about her that I didn't ever know. To me, she was always frail, white haired and almost translucent. To think that there was, beyond the matriach, the head of our family, the kind hearted wisp - that fire pulsed through her veins, there lay passion, and feeling further than I had ever known her capable of.