The Sea of Dreams

A quick excerpt I just read from The Black Flower, a book whose first 114 pages have been horrible and beautiful and heartbreaking in so many ways; this is Anna speaking to her young cousin who that day witnessed the horrors of their house being turned into a Civil War field hospital, and just awoke from a nightmare:

Dreams are the sea we are sailin on, dark and troublesome. But the ship is safe - a gallant ship and a brave captain. We are not afraid of the sea, so long as we have the ship under us...

Just lovely.