Pole Star Quotes

“None of my training can prepare me for this, to find her lifeless, and lost to me, forever. My jaw so tight it aches, I haul the lid up and look down.

An empty pod glares back at me.

I stand and turn full circle, unseeing, as panic wrestles my mind to the ground. I don't know if she's alive, or dead, or on the brink of dying of hunger. This is worse than trying to find her pod. A thousand million times worse. She could be anywhere. She will think she's alone, she will believe I didn't come for her, or that I didn't survive all this. And it hits me, with all the force of a star collapsing into a black hole. I wasn't there.

I. Wasn't. There.

'Blue!' I bellow into the day made into night. Anguish claws at me, tears me into shreds. To be so close to where she was and to have lost her. It's unbearable. 'Blue!' I shout with all the force of my once-military voice, fuelled by fear, dread, and the ache of my love, burned to hell.

In the distance, a startled rush erupts from the marsh, what sounds like hundreds of leathery wings against the air. Then, nothing.
I look up, wracked with hopelessness.
Through the sparse tufts of the treetops, the stars continue their relentless slide across the heavens, even though it's the middle of the day. How the fuck will I ever find her in this endless, overgrown wilderness? I won't. It's impossible. She will die and this place will bury her in its vines. I know I will never find her again.

I close my eyes and in the constellation of my mind, my pole star dies.”
― E.A. Carter, I, Cassandra