When Yllana left the house, she was tired, but I felt a sense of peace inside her, as if letting some of her feelings out had dampened the pain.
"You know," she said. "I never shared this much with anybody. It's almost like we're destined to be friends."
"Which we already are," I said.
"I just… rarely open up so much," she said. "But with you, it was so easy. Maybe because you were an outsider, and you didn't consider me a snobbish girl who has her life laid out for her and refuses the gift while others have to work for a living. You don't seem to think in terms of what class you belong to. You just treat everybody like equals. And I… like that. It's refreshing."
"I also felt close to you from the first day," I said. "You seemed the friendliest."
"When you came to me, asking all those
