Yanik

“Poor kid. All of them, really. And the years stretch ahead, a march beneath a sun that never goes down.”
― Stephen King, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

“When the first faint glow of dawn crept into the cave Moon-Watcher saw that his father had died in the night. He did not know the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was utterly beyond his understanding, but as he looked at the emaciated body he felt a dim disquiet that was the ancestor of sadness”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey

“A pair of minstrels stood beneath them on a ramshackle stage, puffing air into homemade woodwinds. There had been four of them once, but the war had taken two, including the singer. The two remaining had not learned enough about music to compensate the losses, and so they merely played the same parts they had always had, harmonies without melody, and the music wandered anxiously through the air like a lost child.”
― Eric Fenstermaker, The Reaping

“The central garden courtyard rang with conversation and tinkling bells, sphere vines in every shade of green and blue bobbing from ropes across the yard. There were streamers and bouquets of everbue branches, and white incense smoke curled up from the four corners.
Marda saw Ferize and her partners cushioned on blankets and holding their new babies for everyone to greet. On the long table were bowls of cider and small towers of honey candy, a few bottles of gnostra berry wine probably from town and candied fruit and boxes of pastries certainly from town. Most people wore the simple tunics of the Path, but there were others, newcomers, and visitors. Two small droids near the road to town projected competing music, and Marda nearly laughed as they fought with percussion.”
― Tessa Gratton, Path of Deceit