Shass

“What would you say if I tortured you?” asked the bandit leader conversationally. Halla blinked at him. “Err…’ow,’ probably? ‘Stop, stop, stop,’ something like that?” What a bizarre question. What does he expect me to say? The bandit leader’s face took on an expression that Sarkis would have found immediately familiar. “I meant about being a wonderworker.” “Oh. I mean, it’s torture,” said Halla uncertainly. “I’ll probably say anything you want to make it stop. But I’m still not going to be able to make anyone invisible afterward, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
― T. Kingfisher, Swordheart

“But I am made up of more than my roots; I have grown aboveground as well. My branches reach out in different directions. My limbs have faced wind and snow and ice and rain. Leaves open to the sun and close in the dark. I guess what I'm saying is, I'm grateful for every new root I have discovered lately, and for every new bud that sprouts, despite everything.”
― Uzma Jalaluddin, Hana Khan Carries On

“Halla went for a high note and Sarkis listened to make sure the song was the only thing being murdered.”
― T. Kingfisher, Swordheart

“I feel like you're a pit I can't climb out of. The clawing and craning skyway to try and find some shred of light is so exhausting, and it's so much easier to let the ghost of your arms pull me down and down and down. If I let myself remember how you taste, my breath gets hard, my body heaves. If I let myself consider you inside me, I can't function.

I don't know how I handed you this power, it makes me so insane that you have it. And I fucking know, I know it's probably just me and my own shit, that you don't have a damn thing to do with it. You're just some vessel holding all my sadness, glowing with the nuclear energy of my loneliness. If I try to imagine you letting me go, I don't feel free. I feel untethered, unbound. Like I'm nothing and nowhere. But if I imagine you holding me, I crumple.

I'm running out of ways to exist.”
― Kate Stayman-London, One to Watch