Wink Poppy Midnight

When you look into the darkness, the darkness looks into you.

Revenge. Justice. Love. They are the three stories that all other stories are made up of. It's the trifecta.

Wink wasn't a villain. She wasn't a hero. People aren't just one thing. They never, ever are. Wink was flesh and blood. She was bad. And she was good. She was real.

All good Heroes are scared, if they know the evil they face.

You just have to eat a strawberry and then wait for tomorrow.

All the strangest things are true.

Wink kissed deep. Deep as a dark, misty, forest path. One that lead to blood and love and death and monsters.

I'd never get the sound of her screams out of my head, or my heart. Is this what it meant to be the hero?

Leaf once told me that there was absolutely no difference between the Orphans’ fairy tales and the nose on my face, because both were only as real as I thought they were.

I used to think that I needed to be part of a story, a big story, one with trials and villains and temptations and rewards. That's how I would conquer it, conquer death." She sighed again, and nestled in closer to me. "All that matters, in the end, is the little things. The way Mim says my name to wake me up in the morning. The way Bee's hand feels in mine. The way the sun cast my shadow across the yard yesterday. The way your cheeks flush when we kiss. The smell of hay and the taste of strawberries and the feel of fresh black dirt between my toes. This is what matters, Midnight.

For your sake I have braved the glen, and had to do with goblin merchant men. Eat me, drink me, love me. Hero, Wolf, make much of me. With clasping arms and cautioning lips, with tingling cheeks and fingertips, cooing all together.

Did you think that if you created a fairy tale and made all of us play along, made me defeat a monster and become a hero...you'd have a happy ending, like a princess in a hayloft story?

A veces, la gente simplemente se va, Midnight. Se dan cuenta de que están en el camino equivocado o en la historia equivocada, y se marchan en medio de la noche y no regresan más.

All good Heroes are scared, if they know the evil they face. Briggs

That girl made me feel like I was dreaming. Broad daylight dreaming.

Sometimes people just leave, Midnight. They realize they are on the wrong path, or that they are in the wrong story, and they just go off in the middle of the night and leave.” Here

We ate the berries ripe and juicy and hot from the sun, like Laura and Lizzie at the Goblin Market, For your sake I have braved the glen, and had to do with goblin merchant men. Eat me, drink me, love me. Hero, Wolf, make much of me. With clasping arms and cautioning lips, with tingling cheeks and fingertips, cooing all together.

And eventually I realized that the reason I felt so peaceful was because Wink wasn’t taking stock. She wasn’t trying to figure out if I was sexy, or cool, or funny, or popular. She just stood in front of me and let me keep on being whoever I really was. And no one had ever done that for me before, except maybe my parents,

When you look into the darkness, the darkness looks into you. I

The sun was streaming in the hayloft opening, low and hazy. Which was the only way I could tell how late it was. Time seemed to have stopped entirely. I hadn’t had a day go by so dreamily, so lazily, since I was a little kid. Since before I understood the concept of time.

Dad wouldn't bother me if my door was closed. He respected privacy. Privacy was like gold to him, as in worth it's weight. He wanted it, and so he gave it to others freely, and without question

Poppy was saying my name over and over in the drippy sweet voice that had once set me on fire and now just made me feel cold.