Modern Divination

What was a kiss without hands but a letter left unsigned—intentions only halfway delivered?

She wanted to be tucked under his coat and kept hidden like one of his thousand secrets.

Be safe. If she could weave magic into those words and make them a spell, she’d have cast it already. No spell could fully encompass what those two words meant to Aurelia Schwartz, though. It meant, I hope that magic will always be good to you. I hope you will never have to harden your heart the way I do. I hope that when our paths cross again, your smile won’t have faded.

To love something was to deface it—to give it a mark and change its identity forever.

It's simpler than you think to disappear. It takes effort to be remembered, more effort than being forgotten.

It’s you I want. As you are, as I am.

I am Icarus, she thought. Caught in the heat of the sun.

Leaving didn’t have to mean, Goodbye forever. Sometimes it meant, until next time.

You remembered,” she murmured. “You say that like it wasn’t meant for me.

The best days in class were those where he sat in his seat and said nothing during discussions,

This wasn't her place. She had found herself a home on an unsteady foundation, built her nest on a worm-eaten branch.

He remained so attuned to the inner working's of Louisa Eakley's tender heart that the weight of her sorrow fell on his shoulders too; and it was crushing him, burying him in rubble. Soon, he might be impossible to reach.

Guilt for her own lack of grief consumed her, but she didn't think she was permitted to feel the same kind of grief that Louisa and Ingram felt. What power could answer that - she didn't know. Things like this made gods seem more wishful than ever.

They were a watchful flock of birds, one pearl-white wing extended over each of them, but she was a different, commoner breed. Perhaps, not even a bird at all but the animal destined to be roadkill on which they would feast.

I dream of you, Rain. Then I wake up and I don’t have you, and it’s a nightmare.

You’re so good to me, Schwartz—I don’t deserve you.” “You could try to.

Inevitability was never meant to be finite, and I’m hoping that, out of everything I’ve said to you, I can still be right about that.

Neither moved, as if time was a predator that they could elude by simply standing still.

What was a goal without motive—and what greater motive was there than loss?

Her ambition was cruel, but she was made of more than just ambition; and all those things working in tandem made her unstoppable.

Debt, she reasoned, was a strange way to measure something that should have been love.

Dedication made her a dependable student, but stubbornness made her an innovative one.

I’m not naïve enough to believe that we can forget all the unkind things we’ve said to one another.” “I never said anything about forgetting, I forget a lot of things, but I’ve never forgotten what you said in all the time we’ve known each other. I wish it were that easy.

Time always seemed to be the issue for her. It moved too quickly to catch hold of and enjoy. It spurned her advances like an unrequited love.

But there was power in knowing how to use those things to one’s advantage—to take a figure which wasn’t sultry or seductive on its own and mold it to fit the rose-tinted image of whoever was on the other side of that glass.