The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe

She had never met a woman from the waking world. Once she asked Carter about it. "Women don't dream large dreams," he had said, dismissively. "It is all babies and housework. Tiny dreams." Men said stupid things all the time, and it was perhaps no surprise that men of the waking world might do so as well, yes she was disappointed in Carter.

That night and for years afterward, she had envisioned another dream land, built from the imaginings of powerful women dreamers. Perhaps it would have fewer gods, she thought as she watched the moon vanish over the horizon, leaving her in the darkness of the ninety-seven stars.

He loved who he was: Randolph Carter, master dreamer, adventurer. To him, she had been landscape, an articulate crag he could ascend, a face to put to his place. When were women ever anything but footnotes to men's tales?

But he had loved her, or thought he did, and that had brought her, sputtering and gasping, above the surface of his self-regard. The dreamer’s sheen and the power of his passion had for a time attracted her, but in the end she had not wanted a life spent treading water in his story.

Reon Atescre of Sona Nyl had been slim and laughing-eyed, a lighthearted, fearless man who was not attracted to women, seeing her for what she was and not what he wanted her to be, and therefore an easy companion to her.

As a young woman, when she had been beautiful and had worn her hair short and her clothes loose to conceal that fact, she had known all the signs of men and read them well enough that she had been successfully robbed only three times and raped once; but none of those had burned from her the hunger for empty spaces, strange cities, new oceans.

Some people change the world. And some people change the people who change the world, and that's you.

He’s not from Ulthar. I thought I said: he was special. He’s from the waking world. That’s where he’s taking her.

She hadn't loved Randolph Carter. He had been a man like many, so wrapped and rapt in his own story that there was no room for the world around him except as it served his own tale: the black men of Parg and Kled and Sona Nyl, the gold men of Thorabon and Ophir and Rinar; and all the women invisible everywhere, except when they brought him drinks or sold him food - all walk-on parts in the play that was Randolph Carter, or even wallpaper.

in the end she had not wanted a life spent treading water in his story. She still did not—and yet she regarded herself in the glass a little ruefully. To have that choice removed by time and age was painful.

He says there are millions of stars, Raba. Millions.

After a forever of walking,

The five new passengers were tough-looking men: couriers, an accomptant with documents for Ilek-Vad,

She stopped for tiffin at a little tea house

bought a quire of paper

They spoke less of the subsequent years. After leaving Thalarion, Vellitt Boe had continued to far-travel and, meeting Randolph Carter some months later, journeyed with him for a time. A year or two after they had parted, she stopped her wayfaring, attended the University in Celephaïs, and accepted the Ulthar position: a sensible decision, undoubtedly the right one. But speaking with Reon, she realized suddenly that her life in Ulthar had never seemed quite real. She had not bothered to relocate from her chaotically gabled rooms on the Fellow’s Stair when nicer rooms became available, because it hadn’t mattered. She had pretended, and even convinced herself; but Ulthar had never been home.

Reon Atescre had been an impish man, light-footed and merry, and Veline Boe scarcely less so, and they had laughed often then, and now as well, as they retraced their

She received her Physical Studies degree in Mathematics and came to Ulthar, to stay and grow old and teach other young women more rational responses to their restlessness. It had been sensible, a reasonable end to her far-travelling youth.

Of course, he had always been wise in the ways of cats, valuing them above entire races, many men, and most women.

granddaughter, then I am a god, right? So I can save Ulthar. Some people change the world. And some people change the people who change the world,

Yeah. I mean, I work in a coffee shop. People here don’t even see it; it’s like this boring job for them—but every day people say hello to me; every day I meet someone new, who is round and bright and—scattery, made out of parts, plans and fears and love and worry and I don’t even know what. I don’t know how to explain it. Random and meaningful and beautiful. I know that doesn’t make sense.

Nothing like not dying to make you feel alive.

„Do not kneel,” said Claire Jurat in a voice like thunder, like earths breaking and stars forming. „No more gods.