Tomorrow

There was nothing special in my loss. Everyone lost everyone.

For what point does life have if it is not an adventure?

It wasn’t until much later, in the first years of my vigil in Venice, seeing how little time people truly had, that I began to fully realize the absurdity of war, and how unforgiveable it was that the human race—that species of fearless magicians, of enchanters, that creates melodies to break and mend hearts, that builds palaces, cathedrals and cities, that governs even the sky and sea—is bent on war, on brute force and on its own destruction.

Humans possess a fascination for our species, and an innate kindness that they do not always have for each other. I

... the horror was too unnatural. What had been was gone. The certainty of life had been reversed; the change was undoable. For all time he would be cursed to live in that fleeting moment.

There is no man or woman so great that they do not enjoy being told so sometimes.

Seeing them, stretched out from one end of the valley to the other like a giant braid of gold and red, I was struck again by how beautiful armies could be - until the fighting starts.

Children are the purest of dog lovers.

I was often frightened, forever dirty and exhausted, but I believed in our purpose too. In time I forgot where it had arisen from—my master’s distress over Aramis’s death, the conversation on Christmas Eve, the priest’s lost brothers and the vows my master had made—and began to believe that war was necessary, important—noble even. Why else would people kill each other with such decency and skill? Why else would soldiers wear uniforms, buttons gleaming, shoes polished like shellac? Battles of course grew jagged and messy, but the lead-up, the deployment, the training, the sacred hierarchy of command was impressive. Only orchestras of musicians, I would discover, had the same admirable ability to tie many humans together in a single purpose.