The Weight of the Stars

Diversity is a flower that blooms with greater beauty and greater strength each time it is cross-pollinated.

Ten million light-years from now bathed in the radiation of a time without time are the bones of a girl who loved Ryann Bird. In the dust left over from our supernova atoms spread farther and wider than hope are the pieces of the heart of the girl who loved Alexandria the Great.

All that I am is a terribly brave small thing, with a terribly brave small life, and a terribly brave love that spans eons.

Love is not about holding people where you want them. It is about doing what's best for them because you need them to be okay.

Every story has many sides, depending on where you're standing when it happens.

Four light-years from the second largest pulsar, past the black dust and the white. In a small circle of golden light, made by a careful teenage star, I found you," Aexandria said seriously. "No matter what I did or said, there you stood. Like a fixed point, and the Earth moved around you.

They don't want the danger, and the darkness and loneliness," Alexandria interrupted softly. "They want the heat and the light, but they don't want radiation." Roland closed his mouth and looked at Alexandria with indescribable pain and indescribable fondness. "The stars have weight," Alexandria finished. "And my little life wasn't heavy enough to outweigh your want of it.

Fighting for yourself is another way of loving yourself.

This book is for all of us who looked up at the sky in wonder, and then cried when we learned how much calculus separated us from the stars

Why are you rebuilding the tragedy that built me?

I am reminded that I no longer have to wonder, or look back at what was left behind. Because I know who and what I am, and I know where I am going. And I know that when I finally get there, you'll be coming to join me. Because we'll always wind up at the same place when the sun goes down for good, Raleigh. We are all together in this incomprehensible wait.

You couldn't nice some people open. Sometimes the only way to pry your arms away from tightly holding yourself together is when you're given a reason to hold up your fists. Fighting for yourself is another way of loving yourself. That's the sort of knowledge you have to earn through experience.

Don't...take time for granted. You have all this freedom and opportunity and people around who love you. Make sure you use the time you have to love them back.

Please look at them and know that you too can seize your failure by the neck and look it in the eyes. Know that you can gaze at the you that was and say, "I love you. You can be more than this." Know that you can step forward, even when everything in you is screaming to keep looking back. You are evolving and growing. You deserve to.

When the time came, she was ready. Ryann Bird walked the hall of ages: from the gates of man to the arches of the gods, and thought about what it meant to be Ryann Bird.

She said, "Diversity is a flower that blooms with greater beauty and greater strength each time it is cross-pollinated." And I believe she was right.

Ryann opened her eyes and turned to face Alexandria - and God she wished she hadn't - because Alexandria had eons in her eyes. But it was too late to look away.

You couldn't nice some people open. Ryann knew that well. Sometimes the only way to pry your arms away from tightly holding yourself together is when you're given a reason to hold up your fists. Fighting for yourself is another way of loving yourself.

For some reason, thinking about what's far away helps prioritize your feelings about what's all the way down here.

She knew what she lookd like, and she looked like trouble.

Why do you keep looking at me and touching me when you know that I fully understand the price of losing that?” Alexandria whispered. “Why are you ripping me open every day when I’m trying so hard to patch myself closed? It was going to be easy, I was just going to grow up alone and leave. But then you kicked your way into my life and threw your fragile friends in front of me and now I am tearing out pieces of myself to try to figure out how to get back to where I started. I spent months trying to unlearn loving you, trying to forget the strength of your hands and the worlds in your eyes. But there is no part of me left that you have not touched. … Why are you rebuilding the tragedy that built me?” It was a question, and a threat. Ryann squeezed her eyes tight and said the thing that had hidden behind her teeth for months. “Because I had to. Because I’m selfish. Because I want you more than I care about whether it hurts us or not.

I'll be coming for you. This might be your oe shot, but it's not mine. We are better and smarter than they were, and we have more time. I'll find a way, and then I'm for you.

Even on the first day, you were so angry and luminous and demanding. You looked like… the whole world was built just so that you could walk on it. Who could look away from that? Who would want to?” Alexandria held Ryann’s face in her hands and Ryann exhaled softly, swaying forward. “Four months ago… when I saw you waiting at the top of that hill,” Alexandria said, “I learned what it meant to be hungry for you. I learned what it meant to make peace with starving. You want to see space? I’ve been staring at it in your eyes for months. You want to leave? I’ve spent all year learning what it means to endure. I know the weight of this and I know the price.