Black Wings Beating

I’d rather live in a world where I get to love the moon than in one where I don’t, even if the moon won’t return the feeling.

What made some words scarier than others, some sounds too dangerous to be said? Memory. It wasn’t the words themselves that had power but the memories that stuck to words like ticks on deer, draining and infecting them. If you shut down your memory and ignored the knowing-self inside you, you could say anything.

Great poems know more than their poets, but they cannot exist without them.

Power is, and will forever be, tethered to its own weakness.

The ghost eagle couldn't plant thoughts in their minds; it could only distort what was already there. But like Jowyn said, they were all more than their worst thoughts. Maybe there were pieces of truth in everything they'd just yelled at one another, but only the most jagged pieces. No one was only the sum of the broken things inside themselves. Anyway, what were breaks if not openings?

There was no convincing him that only a fool chased the approval of a dead man.

-No se suponía que debía vivir en absoluto -respondió él, serio-. Mis hermanos me querían muerto; esta montaña intentó matarme. Pero aún puedo reír porque estoy vivo. Puedo reír y llorar y amar y cantar, y cada vez que lo hago, le digo a la muerte que aún no me ha atrapado. -¿Aprendes eso de las Madres Búho? -preguntó Brysen. -Aprendí eso -Jowyn se inclinó hacia delante- tras intentarlo de la otra forma durante bastante tiempo, creyendo lo que el mundo decía sobre mí y muriendo todos los días a causa de eso. Aquí arriba, aprendí que puedo hablarle al mundo sobre mí y no al revés.

Entre los animales del mundo, los humanos tienen los apetitos más extraños. La crueldad de un halcón llega solo hasta donde exige su hambre. No hay odio allí, solo necesidad. Solamente la gente puede disfrutar ante el sufrimiento de otro.

Kylee ya sabía a esa edad que el amor no era algo que uno podía ganarse. Era un regalo que algunas personas daban y otras acaparaban, y otras arruinaban en vez de compartir.

If only life could be lived backward, we'd know the mistakes not to make,' Kylee thought, 'and instead of losing all we knew peck by merciless peck, time would return things to us every day, bringing back everything we didn't yet know we'd lost.

The wind of the world was wild, and it mocked human expectations. But it wasn't the wind that carried you. It was the flex of the wing and the spread of the feathers. It was up to you how far to fly and how to come home again.

A hawk you’d had for a dozen seasons could fly away from you at any moment. When you released the tether and let fly, you trusted the hawk to the world and hoped that the world would return it unharmed. People weren’t so different. Sometimes they left and never came back.