Mohana

“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

“Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees
and changing leaves.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse