Hope. Nothing is more intoxicating.

Picture This:

An abbey with bells tolling out loud. Midnight or thereabout. Windy and dim. A dark shadow flitting from the eaves to the highest tower. A snapshot of a candle flickering in a window. An empty cage, unlocked. You can be anything you want. And then there is darkness.

[Image: A Sea of Steps, Wells Cathedral, by Frederick Henry Evans, 1903; in the George Eastman House Collection, Rochester, N.Y., U.S.]