Lily’s feelings were always straightforward, fairly simple, usually easy to resolve. He guessed that his own had been, too, when he was a Seven.

He had been frightened then. The sense of his own community silent, waiting, had made his stomach churn. He had trembled.

We don’t dare to let people make choices of their own.” “Not safe?” The Giver suggested.

Now it was ominous. It meant, he knew, that nothing could be changed.

“But there are two of us now,” Jonas said eagerly. “Together we can think of something!” The Giver watched him with a wry smile.

He had walked through woods, and sat at night beside a campfire. Although he had through the memories learned about the pain of loss and loneliness, now he gained, too, an understanding of solitude and its joy.

“I felt sad today,” he had heard his mother say, and they had comforted her. But now Jonas had experienced real sadness. He had felt grief. He knew that there was no quick comfort for emotions like those.

They have never known pain, he thought.

“It was so—oh, I wish language were more precise! The red was so beautiful!”