““What a mystery blood was - how did a tiny gesture, a tone of voice, endure through generations like the harder verities of flesh? He had seen it again and again, watching his nieces and nephews grow, and accepted without thought the echoes of parent and grandparent that appeared for brief moments. The shadow of a face looking back through the years that vanished again into the face that was now. Yet now that he saw it in Brianna he could watch her for hours, he thought, and was reminded of his sister bending close over each of her newborn barnes in fascination. Perhaps that was why parents watched their wanes in such enchantment, he thought, finding out the tiny links between them that bound the chains of life from one generation to the next.””
