Madison

“I do not remember,” I said, quietly. “I do not remember any of it.” His gaze softened. “I know.” “Perhaps you are looking for Aefe. Perhaps she no longer exists.” Another change in that stare, one that I did not have the language to understand. “Perhaps,” he said. “But I am happy to have you here, nonetheless.” Strange, I thought. I did not know how to describe the sensation in my chest. It was uncomfortable. Everything was uncomfortable. “Even if I am only Reshaye?” I said. Caduan’s hand fell over mine. This time, I did not pull away. “Even then,” he said.”
― Carissa Broadbent, Children of Fallen Gods

“You snake,” Nura spat.”
― Carissa Broadbent, Children of Fallen Gods

“In contrast, Oklahoma and the region she loathed as an adolescent now seemed vivid, spacious, and welcoming. She missed the illusion of grass and sky kissing at the end of the world. She missed standing amid a rustling chorus of wind-waving grasses, the four horsemen of the tallgrass prairie—little bluestem, big bluestem, Indian grass, and switchgrass. She missed May fields dotted with black-eyed Susans, Indian blanket, and coreopsis. She missed bursts of red clay topsoil along dirt roads. She missed the smell emanating from meat smokers, the way the grocery store was always empty on Sunday mornings, good thirty-dollar haircuts, and scissor-tailed flycatchers, suspended like supermen in hot, dry air. She missed the evenings most of all: the grapefruit sun hovering above the prairie, dismissing the day with unpredictable strokes of cantaloupe, fuchsia, and violet.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart

“You’re in the early stages of a Carcharodon carcharias mutation.”
― Emily Habeck, Shark Heart