Each left the fabric of their families, imprinted with different backgrounds, yet somehow found each other, amazed to discover that they complimented each other perfectly, not exactly the same shade or texture but together they were better than they were alone. They began to knit a life together, weaving in and out and around places where seams didn't quite meet. Sometimes the seams didn't want to align and there would be a tear, but relieved, they came to discover that they were able to stitch it back together again. They both knew where the tear had been, but it didn't really show and over time they understood that there would be many tears and that they would be stitched up, so they tried to be gentle with their newly knitted quilt and found that the repairs made it stronger, as long as it was done with understanding, by both pair of hands. And so love grew. and from that love, the fabric of their own family began to grow, knitting together, by their own hands, a perfectly imperfect quilt, improved along the way by tiny little hands. It was a labor of love but somewhere it became more labor than love. They forgot to take care, to be gentle and kind, taking for granted that it would always cover them and would always be repaired. But without the care they promised to keep, it grew thin and frayed at the seams. It should have lasted the rest of their lives, but under such strain the seams began to slowly split and the unraveling, when it began, would not be stopped, shredding down the years that had been lovingly sewn, seems popping and fabric screaming apart. Horrified yet helpless to stop the destruction, watching as their quilt was ripped into a million pieces, by their own hands. They knew there was no way to match the fragments up again, they couldn't remember how the pieces fit together. One kept desperately hanging onto the last thread, hoping that somehow they could scrap what was left and turn it into something new, but the years had worn into the fabric too deeply and it would not be made whole again. All there was when they were through were two piles of tattered fabric, spread over a battleground revealing two small, trembling prisoners of war, bravely trying to take cover from the fallout. Finally, defeated and weary, each turned away from the other, bending to scrape up the blackened, scorched remnants of their former lives, to go on alone to try to stitch something out of the tattered remains.