Rayo Quotes

“What an unfortunate time for the wanderlust to strike!”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“Only the promise of greater comforts kept me travelling.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“Even in my most secluded moments, I was never truly alone.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“As a child, I had thought the guardian-pursuers to be very real, but as I grew older, I concluded they were simply products of our own imaginations, shaped into being by the trauma of the scrying rite we all undergo at eight years of age. It’s not impossible that the scryers conjure them forth from the murk of the soulscape itself anchoring the vigilant images to our conscious minds by an insidiously instilled sense of guilt.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“No matter how often I had tried to change the image in my head, whenever I thought of my guardian pursuers, I masked them with the faces of the Metatronims I had seen in Sacramante.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“In my heart, I’d worried that the presence of the Metatronim would follow me back to Taparak and haunt my dreams forever. It did not happen that way, exactly.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“I had discovered that the concentration required for crossing new territory seemed to quell the phantoms, dim their shapes, and silence their whispers, which was probably the real reason why I had not headed back to Taparak when the weather turned.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“With relief, I’d waved goodbye to my guardian-pursuers on the coast of Lansaal and headed north, visualising them as diminishing specks on the shore, impotently ranting at my defection. See, it is a joke. I am not afraid of them.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“I was hired to tell stories of my experiences more of than for my soulscaping skills, because Atruscans love stories of any kind, and pester all travellers to tell a few.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“The Atruscans are as hospitable as they are hale; it is a shame we soulscapers so rarely have an excuse to tread their hands.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“It was neither welcoming nor antagonistic, just a question. I wondered if it would be easier to lie.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“My hostess had an extensive family of brats, sticky-mouthed and staring, who were huddled around a delightfully huge fire.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“I thanked all the spirits such creatures as Annec existed, whose opponent sole function was the nurturing of others, and that is gave them such pleasure. All you had to do was be weakly grateful for their ministrations, and they puffed up with maternal urges like a sail full of wind.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“I smiled, feeling my face fold into a now perfect copy of my late mother’s wry expression.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“The majority of people were possessive of their theologies, and strongly resented disbelief and criticism from others.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“The man was canny, but then he had not lost a son.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“Not only did failure oppress me, but I could no longer deny the pattern revealing itself before me.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“There was a message to be translated, symbolism to be aligned and understood.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“Information nagged in the air around me, incomprehensible for now, but existent all the same. If only I could pluck it forth, give it form.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“Seeing Q’orveh had somehow choked the urge for intimacy, with anyone, from my body.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“It would be as if I carried a tangible memory of the shaman with me if I travelled with his boy.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“They giggled at my inquiries, shaking their heads, grabbing hold of my hands and whirling me ‘round in their midst. My voice simply blew away from me.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“For a while, I slept, my dreams coloured by the hectic voices beyond the garden; the crazy songs of the gift of the vine.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“Dressed in black, he reclined in the shell like a huge cat; his burnished hair a pale glory in the lady-light of the moon. The man was, or at least strongly resembled, my dream phantom, Beth Metatronim. He was holding Keea in his arms.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“Perhaps, by seeing them in the flesh, I would exorcise the ghosts their images had conjured in my mind.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“It is astounding how, when in the womblike embrace of warm water, we can fool ourselves that we can still be children.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“An insane idea begged to recognition in my head, one that I hardly dared to consider.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“I love telling stories, so I was hopelessly seduced.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“Life without Gimel, especially, was unthinkable to me now.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow

“I realise, as I stand swaying on the splintered slabs, that I have lost the thread of real life. It is stretching to an infinite thinness. And I am losing the equally fragile thread of sanity; it will not be long.”
― Storm Constantine, Burying the Shadow