It would not have been my choice for her, but a child should not have their choices dictated for them.
A show without an audience is nothing, after all.
He was seeking immortality, which is a terrible thing to seek. It is not seeking anything, but rather avoiding the unavoidable.
Even those who keep to their private chambers and their books emerge from their solitude on such occasions, and some are persuaded to join the revelry while others content themselves with observation.
The cards have been telling her as much for years but she refused to listen, choosing to see only the other possibilities, the alternate paths to be taken.
He reads histories and mythologies and fairy tales, wondering why it seems that only girls are ever swept away from their mundane lives on farms by knights or princes or wolves. It strikes him as unfair to not have the same fanciful opportunity himself... During the hours spent watching the sheep as they wander aimlessly around their fields, he even wishes that someone would come and take him away, but wishes on sheep appear to work no better than wishes on stars.
Not a single person in that audience believes for a second that what I do up there is real,” he says, gesturing in the general direction of the stage. “That’s the beauty of it. Have you seen the contraptions these magicians build to accomplish the most mundane feats? They are a bunch of fish covered in feathers trying to convince the public they can fly, and I am simply a bird in their midst. The audience cannot tell the difference beyond knowing that I am better at it.
The stag’s antlers are gold and covered with candles, twisting and burning like a crown of flame and wax.
The towering tents are striped in white and black, no golds and crimsons to be seen. No colour at all, save for the neighbouring trees and grass of the surrounding fields. Black-and-white stripes on grey sky; countless tents of varying shapes and sizes, with an elaborate wrought-iron fence encasing them in a colourless world. Even what little ground is visible from outside is black or white, painted or powdered, or treated with some other circus trick.
Endings are what give stories meaning.
You smile as though you have a secret.
I speak languages with more ease than I read or write them, she explains. It is something in the feel of the sounds. I could attempt to put them on paper but I am sure the result would be appalling.
Because if the girl had not been beautiful and clever, she would have been easier to resist, and then there would be no story at all.
We cannot feel the bars unless we push against them.
There is the softest of sobbing as the coffin is lowered into the ground, but it is difficult to pinpoint who it is coming from, or if it is instead a collective sound of mingled sighs and wind and shifting feet.
Even the ground beneath his feet feels unsatisfying to his boots.
Yes,” Poppet says. “But what’s the use in seeing the future if I can’t do anything to stop it?” ” You cannot stop things,” Celia says. “You can only be prepared for them to happen.
On this evening, Mme. Padva wears a dress of black silk, hand embroidered with intricate patterns of cherry blossoms, something like a kimono reincarnated as a gown. Her silver hair is piled atop her head and held in place with a small jeweled black cage. A choker of perfectly cut scarlet rubies circles her neck, putting forth a vague impression of her throat having been slit. The overall effect is slightly morbid and incredibly elegant.
I don’t like to tell her things that don’t make any sense. Most times things make sense eventually.
He wonders if he is losing his mind and then decides that if he is able to wonder about it he probably isn’t, which isn’t particularly comforting.