"There is something of the dormouse in him still," said the dark-haired woman. Her ears were pointed and cat-like, and she looked little older than Tristran himself. "Sometimes I wonder if she transforms people into animals, or whether she finds the beast inside us, and frees it. Perhaps there is something about me that is, by nature, a brightly-coloured bird."
-- from Stardust by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess

Life goes on . . . ever immune to prediction
And life can be strange
But love can be stranger than fiction
Only love can be stranger than fiction
-- "Stranger Than Fiction", Joe Jackson, Laughter and Lust, 1991