Amanda

“What is a mermaid but a woman half-drowned,
What a selkie but an unwilling wife,
What a tale but a sea-net, snatching up both From the gentle tumult of dark waves?”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“I will love you to ruination,” the Fairy King said, brushing a strand of golden hair from my cheek. “Yours or mine?” I asked. The Fairy King did not answer.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning

“I would like to be a novice here," she said airily. "I would like to live in the temple and drink bamboo tea every day, and eat only seven grains of rice until I was thinner than the Buddha and twice as beautiful. I would leave clean water for the sacred cats and sweep the rushes and the red leaves aside in the fall. I would smell the sake breweries in the winter, and eat one persimmon a year, on the Emperor's birthday. Every morning and every evening, I would cut a square from one of my kimonos and with it I would polish the walls until the tarnish fell away like an old woman's hair, until it gleamed like water. After a year I would be naked and polish the walls with my own hair, and under my body it would look like a house hollowed out of the moon.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Palimpsest

“It began as all things did: a girl on the shore, terrified and desirous.”
― Ava Reid, A Study in Drowning