“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” Wendell Berry

The Nixie, a shapeshifting water spirit who usually appears in human form…

“The hours when the mind is absorbed by beauty are the only hours when we really live, so that the longer we can stay among these things so much the more is snatched from inevitable Time.” Richard Jefferies.

“….She knelt down and looked into the loveliest garden. She longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and cool fountain … “