Lola

“Nona thought it looked like something out of a picture book, and held on to that thought, that middle-of-the-brain thought. There was a thought above and below that knew what it was, but the moment she looked at either thought she’d lose the game.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“I’ve loved you two,” she said. “Not well. Not even wholesomely. I don’t have it in me. But I’ve loved you— in a better world I’d be able to say, ‘Like you were my own,’ but I don’t know what that would even mean anymore. You’ve been my agents..you’ve been stand-ins for something I haven’t had for longer than either of you can understand. Which is why I’m saying—don’t do this. Please, don’t do this.”
Neither of them answered.
Pyrrha continued urgently: “Understand that once you do this, you can’t take it back. It’s better to die. There’s a power to dying clean… dying free. It’s not love, what you’re about to do. It’s not beautiful and it’s not powerful. It’s a mistake. We didn’t even do it right…we were children—playing with the reflections of stars in a pool of water…thinking it was space.”
Palamedes stood, and Pyrrha stood with him. He reached out and grasped her wrist strongly. “Whatever you think we’re doing, we’re not,” he said.
“Whatever you think you’re doing,” said Pyrrha, “you shouldn’t.”
Camilla said, “Just watch us.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“You were screaming. I wanted you to stop, I wanted … I wanted you. I wanted you like a caveman wants a wildfire … or the sun. I thought you were going to take me, somehow. Purge me. Use me as an instrument. But you didn’t say anything … I was babbling, Show me. Come on. I’m ready. You kept screaming and screaming … like a baby in pain. So I tried to hurt you—I did hurt you. I reached out for you, and it hurt you … but I wasn’t strong enough. The caveman. The wildfire. The Neolithic priest staggering in front of the falling star.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Nona the Ninth

“People talk about grief coming and going like waves, but I am not a breakwater, I am not a boat, I am not a statue left on a rocky shore, tested for its endurance.”
― Yiyun Li, Where Reasons End