Clips from the Cutting Room Floor

"He brushed the snow from a stand of Queen Anne's Lace, then bent the flowers' stems to show them to her. "See how they branch, time and again, each according to the same pattern?"

Lyta came timidly beside him. She took one of the dried pods and carefully opened it, revealing last summer's blooms. "Each flower is a thousand white ones, but at their center lies a tiny red, a flower within a flower, the whole contained within itself." She held it out to him, and their fingers brushed as he accepted it.

"Nature has such an extravagance of beauty that she must put flowers within flowers," he said, but his eyes never left hers, and she felt as though he weren't talking about plants at all."