Boys, I decided, simply have a given amount of rudeness they must express.
Tomorrow owes you the sum of your yesterdays. No more than that.” Amber looked out to sea again. “And no less. Sometimes folk wish tomorrow did not pay them off so completely.
Each circle spins off a circle of its own. Each one seems a new thing but in truth it is not. It is just our most recent attempt to correct old errors, to undo old wrongs done to us, and to make up for things we have neglected. In each cycle, we may correct old errors, but I think we make as many new ones. Yet what is our alternative? To commit the same old errors again? Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.
Men walking a battlefield to search for wounded among the dead will still stop to cough, to blow their noses, still lift their eyes to watch a V of geese in flight. I have seen farmers continue their plowing and planting, heedless of armies clashing but a few miles away.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, Nighteyes was frantic. ‘Poisoned. That water is poisoned.’ I couldn’t frame a thought to reassure him.
There are other types of neglect and deprivation. To deny what unfolds inside someone, to forbid the magic that comes unbidden, to impose ignorance in a way that invites danger, to say to a child, ‘You must not be what you are.’ That is wrong.” His voice was gentle but the condemnation was without compassion.
But all know that a woman cannot give her word to anyone, for women cannot possess honor. Women promise, and later they say, ‘I did not understand, I did not mean it that way, I thought those words meant something else.’ So a woman’s word is without worth. She can break it, and always she does, for she has no honor to defile.
For her part, she seemed totally unaware of how her eyes could meet mine and turn my tongue to leather in my mouth. No magic I possessed, no Skill, no Wit, was proof against the accidental touch of her hand against mine, nor could defend me against the awkwardness that overwhelmed me at the quirk of her smile.
Battered at my dreams like a moth trying to destroy itself in a lantern’s flame.
Surrendering that pain to stone had deadened me in a way that was a relief, but there was a darker side to that forgetting. I’ve seen folk who numbed their pain with strong drink or Smoke or other herbs and always the loss of their pain made them less connected. Less human. And so it was with me. Every.
Even now. Even when I feel like most of me is dead, life breaks through sometimes. Food tastes good. Or something Per says makes me laugh. A hot cup of tea when I’m cold and wet. I’ve thought of ending my life, Fool. I admit it. But always, no matter the damage to it, the body tries to go on. And if it manages to, then the mind follows it. Eventually, no matter how I try to deny it, there are bits of my life that are still sweet. A conversation with an old friend. Things I am still glad to have.
Any human who dared to attack a dragon deserved to die himself. And dead, of what use was he, unless someone ate him? She didn’t see why leaving a human to be eaten by worms was more acceptable.
We were one thing. Whole.
The betrayal of a friend differs from the treachery of a lover only in the degree of pain, not the kind.
Blind funny little creatures they were, fumbling in the midst of a love they feared to acknowledge. To win, all they had to do was surrender but they could not perceive that. The beauty of what they could have been together made him ache. Is was a love he had been seeking all his life, a love to redeem and perfect him. That which he most desired, they feared and avoided.
There is something about you, Etta. Something in you that cannot be quenched, by hardship or ill treatment. Your soul gleams like silver beneath a patina of hard use. He is right to love you. Any man would love you.
Fun, fun, fun, got you, got you, and got you again! Here, you’re dead, here, I broke your forepaw, here, your blood runs out! Got you, got you, got you!
Veronica: “Perhaps. If Sa’aw had but a male aspect, but recall the old, true worship of Sa’aw, male and female, bird, beast, and plant, earth, fire, air, and water are all honored in Sa’aw and Sa’aw manifests in all of them. If the Divine is also female and the female also divine, then she understands that woman is more than mother, more than daughter, more than wife. Those are the facets of a full life, but no single facet defines the jewel.
Fate rushes down upon us! The time drags and the days plod past, lulling us into thinking that the doom we fear will always so delay. Then, abruptly, the dark days we have all predicted are upon us, and the time when we could have turned dire fate aside has passed. How old must I be before I learn? There is no time; there is never any time. Tomorrow may never come, but todays are linked inexorably in a chain, and now is always the only time we have to divert disaster.
Then in general charge of the pack beasts and wagon animals. But it wasn’t just work he taught me. Cleanliness. Honesty. He put a value on what my mother and grandmother had tried to instill in me so long ago. He showed them to me as a man’s values, not just manners for inside a woman’s house. He taught me to be a man, not a beast in a man’s shape. He made me see it was more than rules, it was a way of being. A life, rather than a living.” He.