Freddy

“I shook again, tasted plum, and suddenly the words were pouring out of me."She said I sang before I spoke. She said when I was just a baby she had the habit of humming when she held me. Nothing like a song. Just a descending third. Just a soothing sound. Then one day she was walking me around the camp, and she heard me echo it back to her. Two octaves higher. A tiny piping third. She said it was my first song. We sang it back and forth to each other. For years."I choked and clenched my teeth.
"You can say it,"Auri said softly."It's okay if you say it."
"I'm never going to see her again,"I choked out. Then I began to cry in earnest.
"It's okay,"Auri said softly."I'm here. You're safe.”
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

“Soft, the snow falling/Steam spiraling from coffee/The slain cold and still”
― Garth Nix, The Book of Swords

“He desperately tried to think of a story to explain his involvement in her sudden appearance, without mentioning the book of magic in his possession.
 ”
― Max Nowaz, The Three Witches and the Master

“The past hundred years have been most unfair to Cixi, who has been deemed either tyrannical and vicious or hopelessly incompetent or both.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China