"To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and savors of ripeness and earth, and when do our senses know any thing so utterly as when we lack it?" - Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

Encompasses Chapters 1-9.

And now, dear reader, let's start by taking you back in time eleven months by the Asgardian calendar...