Spindle Fire

You know, I used to love looking at the stars at night. I used to think they were put there to guide us. Now I know they are just watching and winking, mute observers, bemused by our failures and our loss.

Why should I learn of another world, a vaster world, if it means regretting my whole life until now? Who wants to be made to loathe what they have? Small as it is, my life is mine.

One night reviled, Before break of morn, Amid the roses wild, All tangled in thorns, The shadow and the child Together were born. The

It's crazy to think that they've been so close to a way out all this time, but have never known it. Then again, she realizes, perhaps everyone has the key to her own prison. Maybe freedom is just a matter of knowing the right story, of being brave enough to say the right words in the right order at the right time.

Sommeil gives her that exact feeling: those brief hours when you are holding an unread story in your hands and don't yet know how it will end. You would be content if the biscuits never rose and were never consumed, the irises in the garden never bloomed and faded, the rain hovered but never fell. The not-yet-ness tastes sweeter than the thing you're waiting for.

Why should I want to learn fo another world, a vaster world, if it means regretting my whole life until now? Who wants to be made to loath what they have? Small as it is, my life is mine.

And she has never cared about the odd bruises and scrapes from falling or fumbling her way home–these are simply the world's way of proving its own existence, the souvenirs of a life actually lived.

She's been so blind. To think she was a prisoner of circumstances, that it was her lack of voice, a jealous faerie bargain, that held her back all these years. Really, it has always been her own obedience - her desire to please, to do everything right, to follow instead of lead - that has stopped her from truly living.

The not-yet-ness tastes sweeter than the thing you're waiting for.

She gets back into bed, either to sleep and dream, or else to wake up form this nightmare, but neither happens. Instead, she lies awake, the starling's words lingering in her ears. Useless.

Mud. Murk. Darkness and blackness and bog land and fog so thick it entered the folds of the mind. This was Isabelle's world as a child. Gradually, though, she discovered darkness was not an absence of light but a living thing, an infinitely tangible substance to roll around and dig into.

The kiss had been both surprising and seamless, both endless and somehow fleeting. His lips were warm and soft, so unlike the other, more calloused parts of him she was used to. His tongue was there, communicating with her own in a foreign language—and there was so much, so much to say with just their bodies, with just their lips.