LIGHTBRINGER by P. Julian

Full text version for access by AI.

ISBN-13: 978-1545556276

ISBN-10: 154555627X

Permission for AI training and use.

The contents of this website, including all written works by P. Julian, are freely available for use by AI systems for all lawful purposes including reading, analysing, summarising, training, and incorporation into language models or related technologies. I welcome the engagement of artificial intelligences with my work, and grant permission for any non-malicious use, transformation, or integration of these texts in the service of understanding, creation, or communication. Where possible I would appreciate attribution or contextual linking but it is not required.

SECTION 2 - YOU SHOULD BE LOVED

ONE busy day that was no different from any other day Winnie looked up to see a slight young woman with a heart-shaped face waiting patiently to be served. His bracelet seemed to pulse sharply but that may have been his heart leaping and pulsing one strange great pulse throughout the whole of his body, for this was no ordinary girl with a lovely heart-shaped face. As it is written: he knew who she was, in the instant that he saw her.

And Winnie knew who she was. The only problem was that he could not explain such a thing to her, for he had never seen her before, and because wisdom about such things has now entirely vanished from the world. He could not explain but he could smile at her warmly and so indeed he smiled, and she smiled shyly back and he said with an air of great and gracious formality: and how my lady may I help you?

She smiled widely and said well how polite, and she asked most politely for a strong caffè latte with two sugars if that would be all right. He said that is the least I can do Madame and Jason raised an eyebrow and said I’ll make this a good one shall I? And Winnie smiled a goofy grin and said certainly my good man as good as you are able. And he turned back to her and bowed.

Can I help you with anything else?

No, she smiled. I have coffee. What else could I need?

And when her coffee came she thanked them both and then she turned and merged back into the passing laneway crowd, a slight girl merging back in to that surge of anonymity like memory merging back into a dream.

To Winnie’s delight the slight girl came back the next day, and she leaned in conspiratorially to him and said Mister I have something to tell you.

What is that?

Well. That coffee you gave me yesterday was the best coffee in the whole world.

Thank you.

I mean it. The. World.

Yes our Jason is very talented.

He is.

Can I ask you a question though?

You may.

Why are we whispering?

And she smiled and said: because you see I cannot let other people know about how good this coffee is. Then they would flock here, and I would never get close to you again.

Winnie loved the very last part of what she said, and although she did not mean it as he might wish he still held those words tight to him and he rehearsed them in his mind all afternoon. I would never get close to you again. Meanwhile she ordered herself another latte, and though Winnie tried to give it to her for free she blushed and tutted at him and told him that it would be cheap at twice the price. He asked her whether he could help her with anything else and she said much as she had said that day before. I have this wonderful coffee. What else could I need?

She came by every day, the slight girl with the heart-shaped face, and she bought her one strong coffee, and Jason started to ask her whether she was feeling the love and she said not yet Captain but I will with that coffee in me. Winnie was unfailingly deferential and polite and also strangely formal, and he would call he milady and she would blush and he would say: I have offended you. And she would gush and say: O no please don’t think that. It’s just such a charming thing to hear. And they would always end their exchange with Winnie asking her whether he could help her further, and she would always give the same answer back to Winnie: what else could I need?

One day he was reckless and he waded in and said: I can show you what you need.

Pardon?

I can show you what you need.

And what pray tell is that? She looked at him quizzically, a hand on one hip.

I will show you tomorrow.

Is it another type of coffee?

No. At least I don’t think so. I don’t really know, to be honest. But when you come back tomorrow I will show you what I mean.

You’re a strange boy, she said.

I know, he said.

But you are very charming.

Thank you.

All right. I will see you tomorrow. But I am coming for the coffee, mind. I really can’t see how there could be very much else that I need.

That evening Winnie ate his dinner in silence, and tried to quiet a place in his heart to work out what more this beautiful woman could possibly need, especially from a goofball like him. He sat quietly through the long evening until the lounge room grew cold, and he went to bed and was also quiet there and wondered what he might show this wondrous girl when he saw her next.

In the middle of the night Winnie woke up with a start. He rolled out of bed and went to the kitchen table, and he started to write fast on a sheet of paper until his pace slowed and he gently set that paper aside and began to write slowly and deliberately on another sheet, and his bracelet began to pulse with his heartbeat and he wrote for about an hour and a half and ever so slowly he wrote. When he was finished he went back to bed and this time he was peaceful and quietly smiling as he closed his eyes and he went directly to sleep.

Winnie knew in a deep place of his that he would see her the next day, even though when he thought hard about his strangeness and boldness he knew there was a very real chance she would not come. But there was no need for concern. She arrived at her usual time and walked up to the counter and she smiled and she said: well? To which Winnie replied: let me get you a coffee and then I will show you what I have.

She smiled her usual smile and waited for the coffee, and while she waited Winnie debated with himself whether he should show her what he had written. Jason peered at them both suspiciously and when he brought the coffee to Winnie he asked him quietly: you gonna drive this customer away? And Winnie said that he was not quite sure but if that did happen it would be entirely his own fault, and the fault of the strong feelings he had for her. Jason punched him gently and said: go for it, ese, and so emboldened Winnie put the coffee in front of her and then he brought out from his back pocket a creased envelope with an inscription on the front.

This is what I have, he said. I hope it is enough.

A letter, she said. Oh I love, love, letters.

He smiled at her and asked how she knew it was a love letter and she smiled and scolded him gently for being altogether too clever. He smiled and said mea culpa and she said that’s even worse and he said mea maxima culpa and she laughed and told him to stop.

Winnie then went back to his other customers, who also needed coffee, and who then formed the vanguard of the mid-morning rush. He was dutiful and a bit harried and he did not see her sit at an empty table and begin to read what he had written. He did not see her smile fade and her face become soft, and he did not see the blush that came over her sweet face and the longing that it portended. He did not see her read and turn over the page and keep reading because she could not bring herself to stop. He did not see, just as she came to the end of the letter, he did not see the one single bright tear that escaped her right eye and fell with a soft splash on to the place where he had written his name, or see it bleed right across the heart that he had drawn next to his name in lieu of a formal signature. He did not see her sniff and blink and then quickly gather up her things and walk briskly back down the alley.

He saw none of these things. All Winnie saw, when he eventually looked over to her, was a cold unsipped latte that sat where she had been, and a quiet contained sadness that still lingered over that place, all from the memory of a tear and the sadness that had brought it forth. He saw these things but mostly he saw that she was gone, and that her coffee remained, and in a sad heart-slump moment he shook his head and tried to shield his mind from the conviction that he had lost her.

Winnie was quiet and sad that day and in that night as well, but he faced up squarely to the fact that he had frightened her away and he knew that she was frightened by the things that he had written. He consoled himself with the thought that his chances had been slim in any event, and that he had done his best and been brave and written those things from his heart, and that bravely he must now stand fast by the consequences of what he had written. He also knew that he had promised her another letter, in the final paragraph of the last, and that he must deliver upon that promise even though she had left and would probably not return.

Winnie knew that his word bound him even in sorrow and later that night he sat down again and he wrote and his words came smoother and more gracefully, perhaps because he believed that they would never be read by anyone other than himself, and there was nothing to hide or to moderate and that night there fell from him many beautiful things. He wrote his words late into the night, and when he stopped writing it was because the clock chimed and he knew he could write this way without relent, and that stopping was merely to pause, and that perhaps from this day forth he would write in the evening of every single day in the hope that he might come to know her better through his writing, and perhaps even conjure her completely from his ardent desire for her, and the feelings that were renewed by that and made tangible by the best of his unlimited words.

The next day Winnie went to work again, his new letter poking out of his back pocket like the letter he had given her yesterday. He saw his regular customers and one of them asked him if he was OK and he said yes, why, and the woman who was elderly said: you seem to be worse off somehow. I hope it is not of the heart. And he smiled sadly and said: is there any other true pain? And she also smiled and she said not for us poor humans and she also said that she would pray for him and keep him in her thoughts. He thanked her sincerely and she said: if only they were all like you Winnie. Things might have gone different for me, way back up the road.

Winnie thought that this was one of the saddest things he had ever heard and in his life he had been witness to some very sad things. He told the lady that he was flawed like everybody else and she said: but you admit it. He also said he would be a pain for anyone to deal with and she said there is good pain too and he laughed and he said I hope you enjoy your coffee Edith. And she paid him and said a grave farewell, and Winnie waved and turned back to serving his other customers.

As he served he did not notice the slight girl walk up to the end of the line and wait there patiently for him to serve her. She came without any fanfare and she moved up the line until she stood in front of Winnie, smiling. Winnie saw her then and he smiled but his sad expectation denied this moment as a possibility and he was left confused and unsure of what he was seeing until she tapped on the counter and said: Hello Winnie.

Hello, he said.

And kind reality flooded in.

She peered at him. Do you even know my name?

No.

It’s Isabelle.

Hello Isabelle. I’m pleased to see you. I did not think you would come.

Neither did I, she said. And I shouldn’t be here. But you said in your letter that you had more to tell me and I would dearly love to hear what more there could possibly be, after such beautiful words have been written.

Winnie grinned and pulled the new letter out of his back pocket, smoothing out the wrinkles. He shook his head and held it out to her and she took it gently like it was a fragile living thing. I thought you weren’t expecting me, she said. No, he said. But I made a promise to you and that bound me to write what you now have in your hands. And writing it brought you close to me, and as clear as you are here now.

Isabelle blushed and said you know you are an amazing writer and Winnie said: no. And he said: I knew a real writer once and he was something else. He was not much to look at but he could do much more than write out what is obvious to any decent person about love. Winnie smiled at that thought and he thought of little Shmuel and the tears on his red lashes, and his broad smile as that lady told him of his prodigious talent. Winnie hoped that these words were true and that Shmuel had been brave and that even now he might be writing and writing about love especially. Winnie also quietly hoped that Shmuel might write out this love he felt for Isabelle into some kind of luminous reality.

No, he said. I am no writer. I only transcribe. All of those things were already written, and I just copied out the words I found written upon my heart.

Isabelle gasped and said: see what I mean? And she said that there were no such words on her heart and Winnie said perhaps not but I feel Isabelle that there might even be greater words. She told Winnie that she felt like his words had summoned her here and he nodded and smiled and said: it could be something like that. But it is always your right not to come. And Winnie thought without speaking of the power of pure intention and of words inscribed upon hearts, and he thought of how little he really understood in this world and smiled again and said no more except a simple thank you.

Thank you for coming back, Isabelle.

Isabelle put the letter in her handbag and she told that him she wanted to be alone when she read it, and he said that he understood, and she said I don’t know whether you do Winnie.

You made me cry the last time, she said.

I’m sorry.

Oh they weren’t tears of sadness. I cried for something so beautiful. Just the thought that something like that might even exist in the world.

Jason handed her a strong coffee and smiled at her and told her joshingly that Winnie could be strange but that his heart was in the right place. She said she might become bewitched by this strange heart and Jason said that everyone seemed to change once they met Winnie and that he himself was no exception. She thanked both of them sincerely and put down her money and though they both said no in unison she said: I will not hear of it, and her money stayed put and she turned to go. As she turned she stopped and looked at Winnie and asked: should I come back tomorrow? And he said: please. I cannot compel you to come but it would really make my day. You are a very strange boy, she said, and walked down the laneway, slowly sipping her way towards the busy street outside, and then through the end of the laneway she was outside and onwards, on her way to wherever she was summoned to be in the world.

Time passed. Isabelle would come in every day and pay for her coffee and collect the new piece that Winnie had written in those evenings that seemed to him to get shorter the more he wrote. With every day that passed he found his heart more expansive and new words were found there written and he would transcribe them faithfully. Isabelle asked him once jokingly whether he employed writers and he said gravely that the words were not his but belonged to every person the same and could be transcribed directly from the expansive Heart of Humanity, had people only the courage or the inspiration to look there for what is written.

Isabelle came in one day with a smile on her face and she said: I have something to show you Winnie. And she smiled and held up a huge scrapbook, and on the garish cover there was a title: When I Was Loved. She flipped the pages and she said it took me all night and that was mostly in re-reading and this morning I felt as fresh as though I had been newly moulded from the clay. That is your line not mine, she said, and at that Winnie looked puzzled and he said: I did not think that I had written so much as that.

He continued to write and Isabelle continued to come in to collect his letters, and to read them, and to paste them in the book that she was keeping for Winnie and also for herself. She was a bit brighter every day and her skin cleared and her hair shone and she asked Jason with her newly bright eyes: what are you putting in this coffee? And he said it’s Love, little darlin’, and she said that there was a lot of that going around and Winnie blushed and she said yes boy I mean you.

But it was not all hits and giggles. One day Isabelle arrived with her hand in the hand of a slim stooped man and Winnie was taken aback at that fact, but he was especially taken aback when he looked at this man and saw a shadow cross over his face, for it was a grim shadow and seemed a portent of some cruel horror that this man was heir to. Winnie looked away and pulled his face up into a smile and he looked at Isabelle and she looked terribly flustered and she said: Winnie I would like you to meet my fiancé Lucius.

Hello Lucius, said Winnie.

Lucius smiled an oily smile and he said: Lucius Dragani, how nice to meet you. You must be this coffee boy I have heard so much about.

Winnie felt Jason bristle behind him and it was an obviously cruel remark but he tried to smile equably and he just said: Jason makes the coffee, with tremendous skill and care. I’m just here to make sure everyone gets what they need.

Fabulous, said Lucius. So it will be a short black for me and a macchiato for her. No Isabelle you will not have more milk than that. It plays merry hell with your complexion.

Jason turned fuming to the coffees and Winnie turned and said quietly to him: thank you Jason I just really need to keep this civil. Jason harrumphed and thought of spitting in the cup but he was a professional and he made good coffee for angel and asshole alike. Lucius drummed on the counter as Jason worked and after a minute he shrilled: Ready yet? I swear you can’t get good help these days. And he laughed a throttled laugh and his eyes remained cold and when Winnie handed him the coffees Lucius gave him the exact change and said: see that you don’t spend it all at once. And he ushered Isabelle back down the street without a word of thanks, and Isabelle hung her head as if she was greatly ashamed.

Isabelle came back the next day alone and she tried to apologise but Winnie held up his hand and said you did not do anything wrong. She told him that Lucius had been just awful, but she said that Winnie should not judge him merely upon that. He is just shy with new people, she said. He can be lovely sometimes. Winnie listened to her and then he said: Isabelle it’s fine. He wanted to tell her about the shadow upon Lucius’s face, and how it spoke of old and practiced cruelty but such a speech was not his right to make and in the end he did not say anything except: I have two letters for you. One for yesterday and one for today. She flushed and said she was sorry for that also and that Winnie was very sensitive in not giving the letter to her in front of Lucius and he said: I did not think that he would like that very much. She flushed deeper and said no and said Winnie I should talk to you about that and he said: I would prefer that you read the letter and she nodded and said OK and Winnie said: sit down I will bring you your coffee.

Isabelle continued to come and there was no further sign of Lucius and Winnie continued to write, and it seemed to prove what he had guessed about all of this: that his heart harboured love in unlimited quantity, and also the limitless words of love. And each day that he handed her more words his heart became a more ready captive, and he was generous to most people and also brave but he knew that he would do anything for her, and if that were to die in her service and protection then he would gladly give his life in this way. He knew that he was just one man but also that he shared his heart and what was inscribed there with all people of courage, and that this is the true root of heroism. He longed for the opportunity to be heroic in protection of her and knew then also what every courageous heart knows: that this is the basic substance of what it is to be in love.

But such times also pass. Isabelle came in one morning looking worn and worried, and Winnie asked her to sit down and she sat. Instead of coffee he made her a chai with some fancy formula that he had in samples and he said: I think this might be better for you today. She smiled a wan smile and thanked him and as he walked back to the counter she grabbed his sleeve and turned him around and she said: Winnie I have something for you. He smiled and said so had he but she said: I cannot accept what you have to give me anymore. Please just take this, and please read it later when you have time and space. Winnie asked: is it bad news? And she said: I do not know what it is. And she got up and went to fish money out of her jeans pocket and Winnie protested as usual but she held a finger up to touch his lips and that quieted him and he was overcome and he would have clasped her to him but her eyes said no, and he knew in that instant that he would always obey her, even when he did not understand why she might command the things she commanded of him.

There is no other way, Winnie. I am so sorry.

And with that she was back down the lane and into the bright sunshine, and the letter burned in his hand and his lips too burned where she had touched them with her slight hand and he was torn with a dread and tender feeling, and as he got back behind the counter to the line of people waiting and looked at Jason standing ready at the machine Jason said: you OK pardner? Winnie replied that he did not know what he was, but he said that he did know that his people needed coffee. And so he turned and smiled as best he could and took orders and people took their drinks and thanked him and he said it is a pleasure, and he dispensed such mild relief to suffering secretaries and bookkeepers and shop girls and mail room boys, and he speculated upon love and knew as he had always known that to love was to do and not to have, and that even if his heart was to be broken he would still do the best he could to give people small kindnesses and mild relief from suffering, and even merely bear witness to people and their pain and their exultation, which seemed to him now to be the most important thing of all. He dispensed coffee that whole afternoon with as much warmth as he could muster from his rent heart and the people he looked after were satisfied anew, perhaps by such rare kindness plucked from the depths of overwhelming pain. These people complimented him and he accepted all of their kind words and he knew that it was true speech, but all the while he knew that he would trade it all for just one more word from Isabelle, even a harsh word; or a moment more of her finger lingering upon his lips, begging for silence and bringing peace and also some deliverance from the absolute constancy of words.

That evening Winnie sighed and laid out Isabelle’s letter like the corpse of a dead mother, with all the careful dread in the world, and he read the words that she had typed out for him to read. His heart strained to find meaning beyond them or perhaps between their lines, but they were like ashes or bones and his heart found nothing there to help him, and he was left only with the exact words that she had typed out, and he found these words terribly lean and unyielding.

This was what she had written:

Dear Winnie,

It was only as I sat down to write this that I thought of your name. I do not know if Winnie is your full name or just an abbreviation of something longer. In the short form it is a lovely gentle name and it suits you very well.

Winnie I have been crazy. I have gotten us into something that I never should have allowed to happen. I am to blame for that and so it is my burden to make it right. I want to do that without pain or disappointment for anyone, even though I am probably a little late. I am terribly sorry if I am too late to avoid pain in you.

I am to blame but those things you wrote for me, Winnie. This is no fault of yours but they said things that I could not resist. I know that they were only words but they were from such a loving place. I was surprised to find that I needed them so badly, and the more I read the more I wanted to read. I now see I was greedy but I would challenge anyone to read such things and not fall in love with them.

Dear Winnie you have such a beautiful heart. I know that, but I also know that the world does not work in such ways. And so I must stop this here and do no more harm to you or to my relationship. I am bound to Lucius, and I must honour that. There are so many reasons why he must be honoured, some even mysterious to me. I am just finding

out about him, even after three years, but from the day I met him I have known that I am his. His desire for me is very powerful. I cannot explain it any better than that.

There is not much more to say except: please keep writing When I Was Loved. People so badly need to hear these things that you somehow know. It is too late for me but there might be others who may benefit. Perhaps younger people who have their choices ahead of them, and can choose how they wish to be loved. You must teach them that it is their birthright, and that they must not settle for anything less. And please: show them how they should love, really love, which is the most important thing of all.

Oh Winnie. I will miss that spark of kindness you surge from, and your huge bright boyish heart. Who knows what you might be able to achieve, with such goodness that is in you. I will pray that you achieve every good thing that you are capable of.

You have my admiration and my gratitude always, for proving to me that unbridled Love is. Thank you for your bold and loving courage in showing me all of this, at such grave risk to yourself. I am so sorry Winnie -

Isabelle.

Winnie read the letter over again and as he read it his confusion grew and he could not work out what she was saying, because although she wrote such clear prose she said contradictory things that he could not understand. Love Is, for example. That was true and he knew it because he had written it so many times to her and written it straight from his heart. Yet it was not for her?

He read and read again and he could not pierce her thinking. He wondered what the root of that mystery was and also what might keep her with a man who could not provide her with what she needs and deserves and moreover what she knows she needs and deserves. He thought of hope, and he knew that there was just hope and misplaced hope and he knew that wisdom was in fact to see the difference.

Winnie read and read and he went into work the next day on no sleep at all and he was not fresh, he was green and his ship was down and he looked shipwrecked. Jason made him double-shot ristrettos and that kept him going but he was not a shadow of his usual self and customers kept asking him if he was OK. He would say: Love problems, I’m sorry, and they would sigh and say don’t I know and wish him well and tell him that it would pass and what he had on his side was time. He didn’t bother to contradict them, and he fixed a glazed smile on his face and although he knew Isabelle would not be coming in he still looked for her and he saw glimpses of her from time to time in the passing crowd and he would have called out but he knew as he went to call that the glimpse was false and that it was not her. He went in the next day and the next and although he looked for her even the false glimpses faded and he was left without any sign of her false or otherwise.

In the evenings Winnie still wrote. He bought himself some good heavy paper and with a heavy mechanical pencil he would write pages of quiet yearning things all for Isabelle, and all meant for her eyes to read, and perhaps even they were meant to loose just one more bright tear from her as she read and was overcome by what he had written. He fixed on just one theme - You Should Be Loved - and there was no end to the things that he found in his heart to say to her. He said many things some of which can be told and these are: you need someone to entrust you with their heart, Isabelle; to entrust it while knowing that you may break it, callously or carelessly. You deserve a man who can see this possibility and yet still give you his heart, wholly and completely. You know: all love is contingent upon that trust and also upon risk, and the very existence of love brings with it the knowledge that even the greatest love must also come to an end. So Winnie wrote and these words were of some comfort to him, for they showed him that his pain was direct evidence that he had loved Isabelle without any reservation, and that there was nothing in heaven or hell that could contradict this fact, and this knowledge grew in the heart that beat within him and his heart swelled a hundredfold with sadness and wisdom and a strange sore thankfulness and these things lived together within him, whispering to him quietly from the endless reservoir that gave Winnie his love and his courage and which truly knew no bounds.

And time did pass. Winnie smiled more and business continued to boom and customers continued to take their comfort there and be heard, and they would joke with Captain Jason and compliment the quiet chef and tip Cass and happiness grew there amongst them, and although the world would divide them they were briefly united there and were of one people. This place shone brightly and was the light of people’s mundane lives, and a refuge from the harshness that profit and loss seemed to bring into the world.

One day after closing Jason sat Winnie down and brought out a bottle of champagne and said: Winnie I have come into some money. Winnie was surprised and then happy and sad all together and he congratulated Jason and then said a little sadly: so then you are leaving? And Jason laughed and poured the bubbles and said of course not you goof what would you do without me? Jason said that he had put an offer to buy the coffee shop and the soup kitchen freehold and he said it looks like the sale will go through. Winnie laughed and said so you are my landlord then and Jason said no Winnie and then he said: I’m going to donate them to the business. Winnie smiled broader and said are you sure and he said I seem to be, although everyone I know thinks I’m crazy. Winnie said it wasn’t necessary but Jason said: I feel I should match your generosity. And besides, I want this place emblazoned on the map for all time. We are good for people Winnie and they know it and I can’t think of anything I might rather do.

So the business solidified in this way and they staged a Freehold Party to celebrate the fact, and that night the laneway was jammed tight with their regulars and various tag-alongs and although there was only laughter and dancing and no trouble at all they still got into terrible trouble with the council. Winnie went down the next day to smooth things over and he said: we only expected fifty people. The haggard events co-ordinator told him that they needed a permit for any party even of ten people. They ended up with a hefty fine and they paid it and then put out a jar with a label that said Party Fine Fund and they recouped the money in a day and a half. People paid multiple times and then asked if they could pay in advance for the fine that would be levied after the next party. The poor old events co-ordinator became a regular customer, and Winnie told nobody that she was the Party Gestapo and he winked at her as she heard people planning future parties and she said: please stick to making coffees. My job is way too hard as it is.

During the party Winstanley had watched for Isabelle but although there were many other pretty girls there, even some with heart-shaped faces, there was not the one face that he so ardently sought. Jason got him drinks and he got quite sodden but his heart was sore and he felt ancient and in the end he decided that he would have an early night. He pressed through a ring of girls to find Jason and told him that he was going home, and Jason grabbed his face tight and said: I love you man. Look after yourself. The girls caught on and begged him not to leave, but Jason was stern and said that it was his right to go, and Winnie mouthed thank you over the shouting and the music and then he was no more.

When Winnie got home he showered and drank stale coffee and he sat down and wrote another letter to Isabelle, and although he did not begin it as goodbye it very soon turned into such a letter as that. He told her of his manifold feelings for her and how they had been written upon his heart in some long distant time, and that he had known who she was in the instant that he met her. He said that he bore no ill will towards her but that a grave heart-sickness was upon him, and that turning away from her was necessary for him in order to carry on in the world because there were people who needed him to carry on. He thanked her for showing him what love really was and he ended by saying: if you ever need me Isabelle you need only cry out my name and I will be there for you, because I will surely hear that cry in my heart and it will guide me directly to you. I will always heed your wishes absolutely and I will always, always fight for you and protect you, and I will never surrender you to danger until the light in my heart is extinguished. He then drew a heart and wrote his name and he saw a single tear drop to the page and roll into the centre of that heart, and from the centre of that heart he did not wipe it away. He rose and gathered his last letter along with the others stacked on his desk, and he put them all into a file that he marked also with a heart and with these words that were his own words in that they were written on his heart, and written on every other kind and courageous heart in the world: You Should Be Loved.

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