Laura

“Dark as night, his mother had crooned when he had reached his fifth year, her slender hands smoothing his hair away from his forehead gently, hair as deep and dark as the fathomless space between the stars, as ebon as the eyes of their people, sometimes I mistake you for a shadow.”
― A.M. Daily, Sky Children

“Research seems to indicate that there is a third and better alternative: We can recognize the in love experience for what it was—a temporary emotional high—and now pursue “real love” with our spouse. That kind of love is emotional in nature but not obsessional. It is a love that unites reason and emotion. It involves an act of the will and requires discipline, and it recognizes the need for personal growth. Our most basic emotional need is not to fall in love but to be genuinely loved by another, to know a love that grows out of reason and choice, not instinct. I need to be loved by someone who chooses to love me, who sees in me something worth loving.
That kind of love requires effort and discipline. It is the choice to expend energy in an effort to
benefit the other person, knowing that if his or her life is enriched by your effort, you too will find a sense of satisfaction—the satisfaction of having genuinely loved another”
― Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts

“What was her desire? Quality time with Bill. She wanted his attention. She wanted him to focus on her, to give her time, to do things with her.
By “quality time,” I mean giving someone your undivided attention. I don’t mean sitting on the
couch watching television together. When you spend time that way, ABC or NBC has your attention— not your spouse. What I mean is sitting on the couch with the TV off, looking at each other and talking, giving each other your undivided attention. It means taking a walk, just the two of you, or going out to eat and looking at each other and talking. Have you ever noticed that in a restaurant, you can almost always tell the difference between a dating couple and a married couple? Dating couples look at each other and talk. Married couples sit there and gaze around the restaurant. You’d think they went there to eat!
When I sit on the couch with my wife and give her twenty minutes of my undivided attention and she does the same for me, we are giving each other twenty minutes of life. We will never have those twenty minutes again; we are giving our lives to each other. It is a powerful emotional communicator of love.”
― Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts

“There had been no pain or death on Lacuna, no suffering. There was only the cycle. His mother had taught her children that an Ezri would never experience death in the way humans understood it, their bodies were only laid to rest, a short respite before they returned in another form to fulfill their timeline. The”
― A.M. Daily, Sky Children