The Awakened Kingdom

Wounds get better. What makes grief get better?” “Nothing. Time can ease it, but nothing ends it.

I did not mean to break that planet it was just in the way when I came into being and I fixed it and I said I was sorry and the planet said OK so since I’m supposed to learn from stuff like that I will tell you don’t break planets, especially the ones with living things on them, or at least fix them if you do break them. Also, don’t go in black holes, no matter how much they look like cute little Nahas. They are not cute! They are actually very bitey and kind of mean. Also just OK I do not want to talk about any of this anymore.

That is what a trickster does, see. Shifts things around, stirs things up, makes the strong weak and the weak strong, makes people mad in good times so they won't get madder in bad times. Tricksters are important.

Grief sounds like a bad thing,” I said, frowning. “Why don’t you and Naha and Mama get rid of it?” “That would require removing love from existence.

Everyone treated Eino like less than he was, but that did not make him so. Even when he tried to fit himself in with their thinking, when he let them use him, he was still not their thing. He was still himself: a great mortal temporarily folding himself small, choosing to bend and smile behind his sleeve and refrain from dancing in others’ presence. He might allow others to forget his worth, might have to remind them, might have to fight and bleed to make them recognize it—but as long as he remembered who and what he was, none of them could diminish him.

But our strength should not diminish yours. It makes us all powerful, together.

Power is not a thing that can be given.

I will be…what I choose to be. If they cannot make a p-place for me, I will carve my own.

Empowerment does not always wait for wisdom,

I put my hands on the table and pushed to my feet. “OK,” I said. “There’s lots to do! You mortals have to fix all the stuff that’s wrong with your realm, if you’re going to make it to the end of the universe.

I am born! Hello! Many things happen. The end!

I don’t want somebody who’s going to talk about me like I’m not here, or say things about one person when they really mean it about another person, or, or—

But without love of the self, others’ love will never be enough.

That’s the way of men, you see, when women don’t keep them in check. They want all, not just some. Nature made them weak: slaves to their impulses, helpless against pain, barely capable of making it out of the womb. Their weakness makes them fearful. Nothing is more dangerous than fearful people with a fresh taste of power.

Women risk their lives enough to bear children and provide for them by tool or by blade; the least men can do is handle things after that.