Daughter of No Worlds

Men want power because it makes them feel good. Women want power because it lets us do things.

I figured you should have something both beautiful and functional, like you." He said it so quickly that it almost didn't register. I whipped my head around to look at him. "Max," I breathed, touching my heart with exaggerated awe, "you think I'm functional?" A dancing smile glinted in his eyes. "I think," he said, "that you are breathtakingly functional.

My name is Tisaanah. I am a free woman and yet still a slave. I am fragments of many things but a whole of only myself. I am a daughter of no worlds, and all worlds. And I am not done yet.

I wanted him in so many ways. As a friend, as a kindred soul, as a fierce teammate. As skin and lips and teeth. As a hitched breathless moan in the darkness or a lazy embrace in the sunrise. I wanted that. I wanted it all.

I was too young to know the truth then. That victory meant another’s defeat, and sometimes our own defeat. That winning meant sacrifices, and sometimes ones that even our own people were not willing to make. That in war, someone always paid.

It's easy to die for someone," I said, "but it is so much more valuable to live. I do not give you permission to fail if I fail.

Because if I allow myself to be angry, I will never stop.

Our life settled into a pulse, a heartbeat, a collection of breaths. In the silence between them, I memorized the cadence of Max's barefoot steps padding down the hallways at night, the way one single muscle in his throat twitched when he was stressed, the whisper of a laugh that always followed one of my quips (however unfunny). I learned that one side of his smile aways started first - the left side, a fraction of a second before the right - and that he loved ginger tea above all else and the list of things he wasn't made for. And, in turn, he quietly memorized me, too. I knew he did, because one day I realized he had long ago stopped asking me how I took my tea and we mysteriously always had a never-ending stock of raspberries, even though I knew he didn't like them.

I'm both disgusted and impressed by the delight with which you flaunt your superiority over a bunch of children," Max said, when I rejoined him between stages. "At least try to look like you aren't enjoying it quite so much." "Why?" "Some might call it distasteful." I gave him a sly smirk. "But not you."" The corner of his mouth twitched. "No," he admitted. "Not me

If I become lost, I will never be found again

I loved her for her strength, for her beautiful brute force, for seeing what no one else did. I loved her for everything the world constantly used against her. I loved her for continuing anyway.

Did you know that when caterpillars make a cocoon, their bodies totally dissolve? They become nothing, before they become something else.

I had spent the night cutting myself up into little pieces for consumption, forcing people to acknowledge me, thrusting my pain into their faces.

{And why would I want you?} Because you wish to be loved, and I have loved many monsters.

Many people do terrible things. But we can either eat our anger and make it fuel us or we can let it eat us alive.

At least I was doing something, unlike Max, who seemed fairly committed to doing absolutely nothing, ever. On a particularly cold day, he stepped outside, shivered, looked up at the sky, and declared, “I’m not made for this,” before wandering back into the house. I quickly learned that Max was apparently only “made for” an exceptionally narrow set of environments, temperatures, activities, and interactions.

I see you, Max. You are no great question.

-What were you? Before? -I do not remember. Now I am only pieces of many things. Incomplete.” Its pain rang out in my chest, a mournful, empty cry. I am, too. Fragments.

Once, many years ago, he had told me that his grandfather used to say that every moment in life was a coin with one dark side and one light. They fell on the ground with one side facing up, but the other always lay beneath it, there, but hidden. Serel always saw both sides of the coin, even when fate handed him nothing but darkness.

I had forgotten that people could be that way. I had forgotten that someone, somewhere, was painting terrible pictures of their wife in a garden. I was so far gone that I didn't even remember that that kind of mundane contentment actually existed, least of all in the same moments as such terrible things.

Physical?" I echoed. "Well - you know. More shallow romantic interactions." "Shallow?" I leaned forward, doe-eyed. "How shallow?" "Well - poor word choice." A slight but distinctive flush rose to his cheeks. "Definitely not shallow, but --" He stopped short as I struggled to contain my laughter, eyes narrowing at me in realisation. "You shit.

I am a daughter of no worlds, and all worlds. And I am not done yet.

She was killing me. We were killing each other. And if this was how it had to go, then I wanted — I wanted so fucking badly — to burn up with her here. Let our bones lie together.

So, mysterious snake man–” “Ascended above, give me a minute, demanding rot goddess.

The real gift was not the necklace. The gift was a home to come back to.

We had carved out these small, intimate spaces for each other in our lives, and by some miracle of human denial, neither of us had thought about what that would inevitably mean. Now, for the first time, I realized the breadth of the gaping absence we would leave in each other.

To be reminded of everything I had already lost while looking into the eyes of everything I had left to lose.

The way I look at it", he said, very solemnly, so quietly that his words slipped into the air like steam, "you didn't forget what you were. I think you remembered. And I hope no one ever again has the fucking audacity to tell you otherwise.

Moth, breaker of flowers, spy glasses, pitchers, and hearts," Max mused, shaking his head. "He is your apprentice after all, Sammerin." "He's a little smitten, I think. But I suppose it can't be helped." And I tried not to notice how Sammerin's gaze slid to Max as he said, "When I saw that red dress, I knew we were all in trouble.

I was, after all, a well-practiced, world-renowned expert in denial. I was good at magic, good at fighting, good at gardening. But I was excellent at avoiding inconvenient truths.