After the beautiful stranger wreathed in light I started to notice the so-called reformer.

Correction: he was around long before the stranger, but we just never noticed. And why should we have? There was nothing to see. He only picked up his ridiculous look after an expensive bout of soul-searching. That oranged hyper-starched monstrosity was all he managed to scrounge up in the search.

I could tell he came from someplace shady because he was so damned desperate to look the bright and shining hero. A little rich boy raised in the shadows, thinking he was defying all odds by sticking his tongue out at daddy. I know the type. Kids always want out, and they eventually want back in. This one’s too scatterbrained to make it far. Too airheaded. No, too romantic, though it was with that that he made the smallest of ripples.

And he was so proud of himself, too. If I hadn’t been there in the end, he would have gotten carried away, advertised himself; the story he fabricated to give himself some substance.

Don’t feel sorry for him. He’ll crawl safely back into the shadows one day and tuck himself nice and safe under daddy’s thumb and go back to dreaming instead of doing.

You don’t want someone like him. But maybe - no - I know you also don’t want someone like me telling you who to love or not.