Magic System Quotes

“Peter painted the valley with deliberate, quiet strokes. His routine was simple: he mixed the river’s water into his inks and pigments, and the valley, in turn, bled onto his page. It was a gentle partnership. A sketch of a deer would twitch its ink-stained ears on the heavy parchment, its tiny lungs rising and falling to the rhythm of Peter's own breathing. He was no sorcerer with incantations, just a man who painted what was already there. Yet, when the peace of the wild was broken and imperilled, the landscape responded to his hand. An ink stroke could tilt a mountain ridge or cause the briars to tighten, proving that the tip of a pen struck with more force than a poacher's gun.

— Description of Peter Goodhope, [Heart of the Earth]”
― Robin Craig Clark, Heart of the Earth

“Every reading costs something. Never something I choose, never something I can prepare for. Just a piece of myself, gone, and no way of knowing beforehand what it'll be or how much it'll hurt once I finally notice it's missing.”
― Hazel Wilding, What the Baker Kept