Naomi

“A new trunk had grown, covering the scar of the burn with thick new growth. Not hiding it, no, for the past could never be hidden, but embracing it with new hope and new dreams so that both past and present formed one unified trunk that continued to shelter our people as we lived on in the shadows of the great Blue Mountains that had seen an eternity and stood ready to face another.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“I know this one truth: some people, ignorant of the miracles love performs, might think I am disabled, trapped for a lifetime in a useless body over which I have so little control. But Mama knows, and now Papa knows, too: mermaids are real; they exist to bring love and laughter, happiness and hope into a world that has forgotten that miracles happen in the most magical ways. And I am a mermaid.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“These humans, these creatures who play at kindness, are each ruled by wounds that, when triggered, make them the opposite of kind. Often, they justify their actions with excuses as shallow as a rain puddle, unable to see that I have my own kind of beauty simply because I’m a mermaid.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories

“I’ve come to understand that in this world, there are those who, in their untouchable privilege, believe that they’re entitled to a perfect life, and the perfect life they get is because they’re so deserving, so good, and true. Their crippled souls are blinded by a naivety that can only understand their life, their pain, their truth. These are the ones who look at us—the mermaids, the fairies, the unicorns—and see only that we don’t fit into their little box of what beauty and truth are. They make token gestures of kindness that are not about what we need, but about what they need to look good in their own eyes, and in the eyes of the world they have moulded to their shallow, selfish limits, leaving us—the magical, the different, the dreamers—feeling less than them; feeling unheard, unseen, and unloved.”
― J A Croome, The Sand People: a collection of magical realism and other stories