Golden Son

Home isn't where you're from, it's where you find light when all grows dark.

There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extrovert.

Friendships take minutes to make, moments to break, years to repair.

I will die. You will die. We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout into the wind - how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.

It's not victory that makes a man. It's his defeats.

He always thinks because I’m reading, I’m not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted.

You're a sinister little shit, aren't you?" Victra asks. "I'm Gold, bitch. What'd you expect? Warm milk and cookies just because I'm pocket sized?

For seven hundred years, my people have been enslaved without voice, without hope. Now I am their sword. And I do not forgive. I do not forget. So let him lead me onto his shuttle. Let him think he owns me. Let him welcome me into his house, so I might burn it down.

Rise so high, in mud you lie.

They say a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. They made no mention of the heart.

Everyone's honest till they're caught in a lie.

We are not our station in life. We are us - the sum of what we've done, what we want to do, and the people who we keep close.

A fool pulls the leaves. A brute chops the trunk. A sage digs the roots.

You meet a man, you know him. You meet a woman, she knows you.

If you're a fox, play the hare. If you're the hare, play the fox.

Let him think he owns me. Let him welcome me into his house, so I might burn it down.

And what is the bloodydamn point of surviving in this cold world if I run from the only warmth it has to offer?

He always thinks because I'm reading, I'm not doing anything. There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted.

Now I am their sword. And I do not forgive. I do not forget. So let him lead me onto his shuttle. Let him think he owns me. Let him welcome into his house, so I might burn it down. But then his daughter takes my hand, and I feel all the lies fall heavy on my shoulders. They say a kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. They made no mention of the heart.

Home isn’t where you’re from, it’s where you find light when all grows dark.

In a storm, you don't tie two boats together. They'll drag each other down.

You are but a mortal," Roque whispers in my ear, riding his horse alongside the chariot, as per tradition. "And a whorefart," Servo calls from the other side. "Yes," Roque agrees solemnly. "That too.

Tradition is the crown of the tyrant.

Do you ever feel lost?” The question hangs between us, intimate, awkward only on my end. He doesn’t scoff as Tactus and Fitchner would, or scratch his balls like Sevro, or chuckle like Cassius might have, or purr as Victra would. I’m not sure what Mustang might have done. But Roque, despite his Color and all the things that make him different, slowly slides a marker into the book and sets it on the nightstand beside the four-poster, taking his time and allowing an answer to evolve between us. Movements thoughtful and organic, like Dancer’s were before he died. There’s a stillness in him, vast and majestic, the same stillness I remember in my father. “Quinn once told me a story.” He waits for me to moan a grievance at the mention of a story, and when I don’t, his tone sinks into deeper gravity. “Once, in the days of Old Earth, there were two pigeons who were greatly in love. In those days, they raised such animals to carry messages across great distances. These two were born in the same cage, raised by the same man, and sold on the same day to different men on the eve of a great war. “The pigeons suffered apart from each other, each incomplete without their lover. Far and wide their masters took them, and the pigeons feared they would never again find each other, for they began to see how vast the world was, and how terrible the things in it. For months and months, they carried messages for their masters, flying over battle lines, through the air over men who killed one another for land. When the war ended, the pigeons were set free by their masters. But neither knew where to go, neither knew what to do, so each flew home. And there they found each other again, as they were always destined to return home and find, instead of the past, their future.

I didn't mind that it was always about you, Darrow. That was what burned Tactus, but not me. I'm not in love with you like Mustang. I don't worship you like Sevro or the Howlers. I was a true friend. I was someone who saw your light and your dark and accepted both without judgement, without agenda...

There is no greater plague to an introvert than the extroverted.

We’re all just wounded souls stumbling about in the dark, desperately trying to stitch ourselves together, hoping to fill the holes they ripped in us.