Sometimes you find yourself in a whirlpool of events larger and more powerful than yourself. You spin and twist, and what was before familiar becomes harder and harder to grasp. Such was my experience with the untimely death of one of my teenage friends. When I learned that he had committed suicide, I hastily set out to hitchhike to his village - arriving eventually, but too late for the funeral. One night, a few years earlier, I returned home to find a sixteen-year-old runaway girl at my doorstep. I invited her in and she accepted, but only after making me promise that I will never ask her why she was there. I instantly fell in love with her. Though we knew each other for only a brief period of time# she profoundly affected my life. Over the course of years, I moved from one country to the next, one city to another, but the memory of my friend's death and my encounter with this elusive wayfarer always stayed with me. They inspired the story of Ave.