Tiara

“Music, it seemed, could appear in many voices, and had all of the emotions and array of vocabulary as a human..”
― Esther Dalseno, Drown

“Everybody made faces around here. Human beings, she discovered, could not maintain the stony, frozen expressions of the merfolk, not for an instant. There was not a moment where their faces remained blank. There was always a light in their eye, and the light, like red wind, would flare into a raging fire without notice.”
― Esther Dalseno, Drown

“It seemed only right that beauty was the key to the industry, and the sacrificing of beauty to buy possessions seemed only fair to her evolving mind.”
― Esther Dalseno, Drown

“The president is not at all like the powerful icon I imagined her to be. She’s more like I remember Amma: small and delicate with a sari that dances behind her as she walks. Of course, the president is clad in white, the color that shows eternal mourning of a lost child, while Amma never wore white. She wore reds and oranges and deep greens. Colors of celebration, of happiness. Perhaps she wears white now. Now that I am dead to her.”
― Holly Bodger