The Dovekeepers

Here is the riddle of love: Everything it gives to you, it takes away.

I knew what it was to yearn for a life so distant it seemed that it had never been anything more than a dream.

Being human means losing everything we love best in the world," she murmured as she released me. "But would you ask to be anything else?

What men yearn for they often destroy.

We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could.

Still anyone who trusts a serpent deserves its bite. The wise see a creature for what it is, not what it says it may be.

Even as a small child, I understood that woman had secrets, and that some of these were only to be told to daughters. In this way we were bound together for eternity.

I must keep my head and not give in to desire, for desire is what causes women to drown.

You are only worthy of what you prove yourself to be.

Perhaps it is possible to discover more in silence than in speech. Or perhaps it is only that those who are silent among us learn to listen.

You don't fight for peace sister,' Nahara told me, 'You embrace it.

This was what it meant to be human, to know that time moved and all things changed.

If we had paid attention, we would have understood there are some things in this world you cannot outrun.

Our rest is formed by our waking life and our waking life is formed by our sorrows.

I wept to think that life went on even when so much had been lost, that rain still fell and myrtle grew between the rocks.

I loved him even now, as he took a knife to my throat, as I drowned in blood, as I whispered "Cousin, you were wrong. We were born to live.

But now I understood that, although words were God's first creation, silence was closer to His divine spirit, and that prayers given in silence were infinitely greater than the thousands of words men might offer up to heaven.

But what we are given is taken as well, so that we know God's glory comes to us from His will alone.

Any weapon touched by a woman, even by accident, must be cleansed with both water and prayer so that her essence would not linger, diverting the warrior who might use it next, for even the faintest touch could bring lust to that man's heart. Perhaps that meant a woman who was well trained in arms would be the superior warrior, her attention never wavering from her task.

He wanted pain, I saw that in him, and what a man wants he will often manage to find.

No barrier was strong enough to keep out the movement of time.

That was the sorrow of it. He saw the light but never expected the darkness.

The river runs every shade of blue that has ever been known to humankind: ink and turquoise and lapis, indigo, teal, cerulean, and ultramarine.

The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and leaves you without a single word of comfort.

They say the truest beauty is in the harshest land and that God can be found there by those with open eyes.

The stars are reflected from within the black water in the cistern. I find comfort in the omen I glean from this: light in the darkness, truth when it seems there is none.

You are my armor and my sword, my faith and my tresure, everything I'm fighting for.

Just know that what's done can be undone, but what's undone can never again be.

Weapons are kept from women, but such a naming suggests that perhaps men fear our talents in war as well as our desire for peace.

They carried what was holy within them, for every man was a temple, and every prayer spoken could be heard by our Father above us.