Mohana

“That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

“It was not death she feared. It was misunderstanding.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“Morozko was there, between one blink and the next. She hadn't put the men to sleep. He had. He was there, himself, real, in the treasure-room with her.

Now the winter-king was turning pale eyes on her. She stared. It was really him. Pulled to her, somehow, as she remembered his power. As though drawing him to her was easier than calling down sleep herself.

Summoned. She'd summoned the winter-king like a stray spirit.

The both realized it at the same time. The shock in his face mirrored the feeling in hers.

For an instant, they were silent.

Then he spoke. "A thunderstorm, Vasya?" he said, with effort.”
― Katherine Arden, The Winter of the Witch

“Chyerti—that’s us, demons and devils, small and big—are compulsive. We obsess. It’s our nature. We turn on a track, around and around; we march in step; we act out the same tales, over and over, the same sets of motions, while time piles up like yarn under a wheel. We like patterns. They’re comforting. Sometimes little things change—a car instead of a house, a girl not named Yelena. But it’s no different, not really. Not ever.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless