Nuriya

“Another thing to study," Natalie said, amused. "Will you ever be done?"

I smiled into the sun, one hand holding my bonnet against the firm grasp of the wind. "I should hope not. How dreadfully tedious that would be.”
― Marie Brennan, The Tropic of Serpents

“I had never seen this type of clock, carved from hardwood into the shape of our homeland (...) Some craftsman in exile had understood that this was exactly the timepiece his countrymen desired. We were displaced persons, but it was time more than space that defined us. While the distance to return to our lost country was far but finite, the number of years it would take to close that distance was potentially infinite. Thus, for displaced people, the first question was always about time: When can I return?

Refugee, exile, immigrant — whatever species of displaced human we were, we did not simply live in two cultures, as celebrants of the great American melting pot imagined. Displaced people also lived in two time zones, the here and the there, the present and the past, being as we were reluctant time-travelers. But while science fiction imagined time-travelers as moving forwards and backwards in time, this timepiece demonstrated a different chronology. The open secret of the clock, naked for all to see, was that we were only going in circles”
― Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer

“And maybe he wanted her to be the kind of girl who dressed as Queen Mab, who loved words and had stars in her blood.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“If the humans see me actually doing my job, it helps keep suspicions from forming about faulty governor modules.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red