(An excerpt) Of Life Under Star

"And I wonder if Eva and me would still be friends, after I'd tell her all these things. I wonder if we're still friends now, with me so far away, having not told her anything of my plans, and her thinking me dead, or worse. I wonder if I truly am dead, no longer the friend she knew, but Aishe the Gypsy. And I wonder, finally, if someone can be friends with a dead person, even one who's dead but come back to life as someone else. Someone you've never met before."