The breeze blew through the windows, billowing the curtains and ruffling his curls. She watched, transfixed. Everything that was normally unremarkable, love transmuted into something interesting or meaningful. The way his hair moved, how his eyes expressed the range of emotions with just a flick of his lashes, how his laugh began in the right corner of his mouth. What came first : the love that made one person out of millions look perfectly appealing, or a perfectly appealing appearance, which brought on the love?

"Do you know how a tree changes shape to grow around an obstruction?" she asked, her voice hollow. "How it develops an unnatural bent, or ugly bulges?"
"I have seen these trees, yes."
"I'm wondering how misshapen I am," she whispered. "I wonder how bent out of shape I am from this attempts to exist around some fear, instead of just growing, straight and up, as I should have."
Elias was silent for a moment. He put down a knife. "A tree cannot be ugly," he said. "In nature, all that matters is to survive. A living tree is a good tree."