Wake of Vultures

So not every person fits into the little rooms we build to hold them. There are infinite combinations of human and inhuman, male and female, brown and white.

She was ugly, was all they'd told her. But she didn't find them beautiful, so what did it matter?

Outside of monsters, meat is meat. Science is a powerful teacher. And hunger is a cruel mistress.

A creature is what it is, even if it can't show its true face.

Could a mare only like mares or stallions, or could a mare like whatever she damn pleased? Maybe she just didn't know enough yet to understand what she was or what she wanted. Or maybe she was lots of things, just as her skin was a mixture of browns. Maybe she didn't have to like anything.

People need to be touched and talked to, they need to know somebody else in the world cares.

Nettie's one-eyed glare was flat, her patience gone. "I'm the feller that's going to kill you." "You're not a feller." "That's not yours to decide.

Because you were raised by ignorant people. They taught you to use things before you understood them. To kill things before you recognized them. To hate things before you knew them. But you'll appreciate a thing better when you know where it comes from, when your hands know the shape of it.

Being a person was mighty twisty, and yet she didn’t want to go back to being nothing.

Because a shadow was a thing that defined itself, and Nettie didn't have to fit anyone else's shape.

Nettie scanned the shed for anything useful, but all she saw were big, clumsy things, like hoes and plows and men.

There's not shame in being what you are... I'm the only one who gets to say what I am

Sunset, at least, took its time, nice and lazy. She liked the colors of it, and the way that no one could own the sun. It couldn't be compelled, couldn't be roped. You could yell at it all day long, threaten and plead and cuss, and the sun would not budge a goddamn inch. It was what it was, and it took its damn time about it

Because you were raised by ignorant people. They taught you to use things before you understood them. To kill things before you recognized them. To that things before you knew them. But you'll appreciate a thing better when you know where it comes from, when your hands know the shape of it

The world was not a place of black and white, night and day. It was shades of gray and shadows, dusk and dawn, in-between moments and shifting sands.

You're nobody's slave now, and now is all that matters." - Coyote Dan It was true. And yet the truth of it washed the first sixteen years of her life with a shameful pain that she'd pushed deep down into a dark hole in her soul, one where she never had to look at the ugliness that was human nature. - Nettie Lonesome

If a man values something, he'd best leave his mark on it." Nettie thought of the scars on her back and down her arms and legs. For something she'd been long told had no value, she carried a lot of brands

You don't seem bad... But I reckon most bad things don't think they're bad

You're human, all human, tempered with long suffering and brief mortality like a blade forged in fire and ice

Don't blame what's been a creature's legs. Blame what's in its heart

So like a man, to think there's safety among yet more men

But nobody calls a white man that." "No one pokes the biggest, dumbest gull in the herd, but no one follows him, either.

Whatever is born is something new, something unique. Nothing is pure. Everything is a half-breed.

Because I do what I want. I might like wearing a dress, but I don't wear it for them. It's for me. Because I like the feel of it. And I'll not have them taking anything from me that I'm not willing to give

And remember: You don’t have to be what they tell you to be.