Buttery-Goose

“I like knowing there’s certain laws in the universe, Ayla’s father had said once, a very long time ago, before everything. You can’t count on much. Can’t trust most things to stay solid. But there is always some sort of force at work. Even way out there past the sky, so far away that we can’t even imagine it, things work the same. Your mother would explain it better. Everything is just bodies in motion, bodies in orbit, just like here. Pushing and pulling. You know what that’s called? The law of falling.”
― Nina Varela, Iron Heart

“A law for a paradox. I’ll trade you.
We believe the Universe birthed an infinite number of stars. By this logic, you could stand anywhere in this world and look up at the night sky and your line of sight would inevitably end on a star. By this logic, the night sky shouldn’t be dark at all; it should be a blinding wash of starlight. Therein lies the paradox. The problem is the assumption that the Universe is static, unmoving; that every star has always occupied the same space in our sky. The paradox doesn’t account for the fact that the Universe, like all things, was born and has been growing ever since. Expanding outward—pushing, pulling, as you told me. Celestial bodies floating in a black sea, carried by a current older than life. Drifting farther and farther apart. The nature of the Universe is that everything inside it becomes lonelier and lonelier and lonelier. Some nights I can think of nothing else, and nothing more terrifying. Some nights I lie awake, thinking of this, and it makes me unspeakably sad.
Not as often, these days.
Because it’s you.
It’s you, the wash of starlight, the old paradox: if the Universe were static, I could stand anywhere in this world and I swear my line of sight would end on you. I swear I’d find you in the dark.”
― Nina Varela, Iron Heart

“You keep comparing yourself to a book. That is not how I see you. If I want to learn about you, it’s not for...pleasure, or leisure, or the desired mastery of a subject. I am not trying to learn you like a language. I am trying, Ayla, to learn you like a person. Like people do, with the knowledge that I will never know everything. That it is impossible to know everything. Because you deserve to be known, in whatever capacity you wish. I am trying to become a person who deserves to know you.”
― Nina Varela, Iron Heart

“My hear, if I have one, is a house of empty rooms and empty halls. My thoughts and footsteps echo. Sometimes I feel like a guest in the house of myself. But sometimes, someone’s footsteps cross my floor, and that is enough. These days, I luxuriate in my loneliness. I walk through my empty halls naked and singing.”
― Nina Varela, Iron Heart