Walled In Quotes

“They saw how the wall around Eden stretched away on either hand, with only the one opening, as though to guard those within from hungry hordes who might wish to come inside. And next to the cherubim they saw the flaming sword. … The flaming sword turned this way, to prevent any intruder entering from the east, and that way, to prevent any intruder entering from the west. But it did not ever turn in the direction of the garden. The mouse and the beetle stood together watching it for a long time. Beyond it the country stretched away, with winding rivers and low hills and stands of trees and no moving thing in sight. The beetle said, ‘These are formidable defences. No one can enter Eden. But I do not see that there is anything to prevent us leaving.”
― Lucy Hughes-Hallett, Peculiar Ground

“Spread before them was a white causeway, paved with oyster shells that glimmered in the last of the moonlight. The water lapped it on either side, and beyond was a walled city, with the sea moving lazy as a loving hand against the base of its walls.
It looked like a heap of stars rising massively toward a crown of gold-tipped towers, lit as though for a festival night. Windows and streets shone, fires flickered in the tiers of the spiraling street, perfect as jewel-work. Even in that fading light, she could make out colors, as though those firelit roofs contained hidden places: gardens, perhaps, or painted chapels.
For a breath she was sure she dreamed.
Then the smell of salt and bladder-wrack and something fishy came to her nose and faintly she saw the masts of ships, a black forest starred with lanterns, in the sea beyond the walls. It was real. It was all piercingly real. This was Keris, the drowned jewel of Brittany. But it was not drowned. It stood shining in the Lost Lands, where no man had seen it for a thousand years. It was larger than Nantes, and more beautiful.
It was the loveliest thing she had ever seen.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters