Life is hard, no? And full of sorrow. The Pilani dance in defiance of death and grief and hardship. They choose to burn before the darkness, rather than to gutter out like a dim flame.
Cadvan smiled. “We are all many,” he said. “But most of us don’t have the privilege of understanding that as clearly as you do. It is hard to know oneself, but until we do, we cannot know why we act as we do. It’s a lifetime’s quest, and it never ends.
But all these truths, woven together, might give us a picture of what is true. That is why it’s important to know all the different stories. We can never see all the sky at once.
The company of true friends, the taste of good food, the blossoms in spring, all the ordinary things that make the texture and meaning of life.
The weather was clear and still, and the countless stars opened above them, seeming like brilliant cold fruits that Maerad could simply pick out of the sky.
All the fears and doubts surrounding her grief and regrets were swept up into the tempest of the music, poising here in the centre of the moment, a clear vessel of joy.
A man cannot eat more than three meals a day, or live in more than one house at a time. If you have what you need, and more than you need, what is the use of adding to it?
The law is that the hungry must be fed, and the homeless must be housed, and the sick must be healed. That is the way of the Light.” Maerad.
The risk of all friendship is, alas, a little grief.
Often what you humans call chance is instead the workings of a deeper pattern, which the casual eye cannot easily perceive.
They choose to burn before the darkness, rather than gutter out like a dim flame.
I can promise, however, that the scrying will not hurt you,” Nelac continued. “And I will order a special feast afterward, just for you, to make up for it.” Hem.
She wondered if the stars could sense the vibrations of human joy and wonder, of grief and despair.
Maerad, our world is full of sorrow and evil,” he said. “But there is also beauty and light and love. You must remember that.
The most wise are those who know how little they know!” They.
For life is what animals can teach us: how the present moment is all, and past and future are illusion.
Let us drink to fellowship. May the Light bless us all, friend and stranger, and make true our tongues, and truer our hearts, and truest of all our deeds.
Maerad was pierced by a sudden grief, and briefly forgot all about pretense and masks: the world was too cruel for play.
I watched as the stars faded and the landscape began to materialize out of the night and become solid again, and the rim of the world grew rose-pink and deepened to orange and then split with molten gold, and the first rays of the sun speared the wide, empty plains.
They are caught between one world and another, and they no longer belong anywhere.