Rose Mellie Rose part II

"I stayed there a long time looking at the ocean, long after the Queen of the Fairies had disappeared over the horizon. And then all of a sudden everything stopped. I had the impression that even the ocean had stopped moving.

I was still on the pier when the fishermen came. They asked me what I was doing there all alone in my wedding dress. So I told them about Yem's leaving and about the channel he wants to follow to the end. The fishermen shook their heads. They say the channel only exists in legends. They think I was wrong to marry Yem. But I do not think like they do. I was right to marry Yem, no matter what the fishermen think. They don't understand anything about the Queen of the Fairies."

I chose this quote because I think that this is an excellent example of how much she values the legends. Throughout the book it seemed to me that she had no emotion, that nothing mattered enough to cause her to react. I thought at first that it was because she valued nothing, but this quote turned me 180 degrees. This quote made me feel like she is extremely emotionally stable. She lingers long after Yem is gone, but she does not fall to pieces. She trusts in the legends and the desire to keep them close. She holds onto them as her only stable piece of identity. I thought it was consistent that she married Yem because he held legend familiarity to her.