The Space Between Worlds

They say hunting monsters will turn you into one. That isn’t what’s happening now. Sometimes to kill a dragon, you have to remember that you breath fire too. This isn’t a becoming; its a revealing. I’ve been a monster all along.

Because that’s what a sister is: a piece of yourself you can finally love, because it’s in someone else.

It is only one world in infinite universes where this impossible happiness exists, but that is what makes it so valuable.

Human beings are unknowable. You can never know a single person fully, not even yourself. Even if you think you know yourself in your safe glass castle, you don’t know yourself in the dirt. Even if you hustle and make in the rough, you have no idea if you would thrive or die in the light of real riches, if your cleverness would outlive your desperation.

The multiverse isn't just parallel universes accessible thorough science. They are in each of us, a kaleidoscope made of varying perceptions.

the universe erases me, but it also remakes me again and again, so there must be something worthwhile in this image.

Our dead are only weights on our backs when we won't let them walk beside us, when we try to pretend they are not ours or they are not dead.

Death can be senseless, but life never is.

I guess it’s easy to be confident when you’re helpless, easy to be fearless when you have nothing left to lose

Sometimes, focusing on survival is necessary. Sometimes, it is just an excuse for selfishness.

Why have I survived? Because I am a creature more devious than all the other mes put together. Because I saw myself bleeding out and instead of checking for a pulse, I began collecting her things. I survive the desert like a coyote survives, like all tricksters do.

But Wiley City is bad at age anyway. They see a fourteen-year-old runner outside the wall and say 'A suspicious man spotted near the border', but when a thirty-three-year-old Wiley-ite murder his girlfriend it's 'Good boy goes bad'.

Even worthless things can become valuable once they become rare. This is the grand lesson of my life.

Rage is dirty fuel, but it burns hotter than grief ever could.

killing should take longer than a heartbeat. Murder should be unignorable, always.

I am always pretending, always wearing costumes but never just clothes.

What do you call science when it answers a prayer?

She’s staring at me, her face unreadable in the same way a star chart is unreadable when there are no lines to mark the constellations. It’s not that you can’t make out a shape, it’s that you can make out so many shapes you’ll never know which one is right. If I wanted to, I could read longing in her distance. But if I’m honest, it’s probably just my own reflected back by her indifference.

We are pilgrims at an inn. When we leave is immaterial, because we are only meant to leave.

Or maybe it’s just easier to think something is impossible than to try.

It’s been written in my stars on more than one Earth.

I believed I was stable. I thought my ability to go to work, to visit my family, to eat and sleep, meant that I was. I confused routine for reliability and reliability for safety. I had no idea the chaos I was capable of holding inside of me. Now the only thing "static" about me is the buzzing rush in my ears when I try to think.

I know he is, because I am, because of all of us who were told we were nothing will never stop trying to be everything.

Don’t be scared. Don’t regret. Whatever time you had, it was enough. Whatever you accomplished, it was enough. We will remember your good deeds for the rest of our lives. We will forget your wrongdoings forever. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for spending your time in the dirt with us.

What they don’t tell you about getting everything you ever wanted is the cold-sweat panic when you think about losing it. For someone who’d never had anything to lose, it’s like drowning, all the time.

I could become the thing I’d always feared, and then I might never be afraid of anything again.

It’s a space between worlds, no different from the star-lined darkness I stand in when I traverse. The darkness is worth it, because I know what waits on the other side.

I don't realize how many years I've been alone until I warm under a gift as simple as someone's undivided attention.

He should stop me, but he doesn’t, because he’s intelligent and the downfall of all intelligent creatures is curiosity.