Allison Baerin

“What is that thing?” he asked, peering at the device Clive was fiddling with. “It looks like a backwards steampunk telescope with kaleidoscopic lenses.” “Is that a research device from your world?” Clive asked. “No, it’s what happens when a cosplayer eats too much sugar. Have you found anything?”
― Shirtaloon, He Who Fights with Monsters 10

“If we truly want to be helpful to people in pain, we need to be willing to reject the dominant story of pain as an aberrant condition in need of transformation or redemption. We need to stop trotting out the stages of grief that were never meant to become universal scripts. In telling better stories, we weave a culture that knows how to bear witness, to simply show up and be present to that which can never be transformed. In telling better stories, we learn to be better companions, to ourselves, and to each other. Pain is not always redeemed, in the end or otherwise. Being brave—being a hero—is not about overcoming what hurts or turning it into a gift. Being brave is about waking to face each day when you would rather just stop waking up. Being brave is staying present to your own heart when that heart is shattered into a million different pieces and can never be made right. Being brave is standing at the edge of the abyss that just opened in someone’s life and not turning away from it, not covering your discomfort with a pithy “think positive” emoticon. Being brave is letting pain unfurl and take up all the space it needs. Being brave is telling that story. It’s terrifying. And it’s beautiful. Those are the stories we need.”
― Megan Devine, It's OK That You're Not OK: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand

“She did not long for childhood, as such. On the contrary, Pei was extremely happy to have left that clumsy messiness behind forever. What she longed for, rather, was the simple space to think and explore nothing more complicated than can I kick my shoe over the tree? and how do hands work? and if I flash my face at this flower for long enough, can I make it change colour? Sillinesses such as these had been vital once, a key component in learning the basic rules of the universe within and around her. She no longer needed to discover those rules, but it would be nice, she thought, to have the time to become that intimate with them again.”
― Becky Chambers, The Galaxy, and the Ground Within

“Bonedog came and sat on her foot. She closed her fingers around his collar and thought, My dog trusts me, and then, My dog is witless and also dead, but things loosened a little in her chest nevertheless.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone