Deni

“All cats are grey with the candles out.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“You are pure-hearted, Branza, and lovely, and you have never done a moment's wrong. But you are a living creature, born to make a real life, however it cracks your heart. However sweet that other place was, it was not real. It was an artifact of your mam's imagination; it was a dream of hers and a desire; you could not have stayed there forever and called yourself alive. Now you are in the true world, and a great deal more is required of you. Here you must befriend real wolves, and lure real birds down from the sky. Here you must endure real people around you, and we are not uniformly kind; we are damaged and impulsive, each in our own way. It is harder. It is not safe. But it is what you were born to.”
― Margo Lanagan, Tender Morsels

“He only mourns their child, who passed so swiftly from birth to death, exchanging one oblivion for another like a sleeper rolling over.”
― Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock

“More than a food, the pickle was a kind of drug for tenement children, who were still too young for whiskey.”
― Jane Ziegelman