Olivia

“The marsh did not confine them but defined them and, like any sacred ground, kept their secrets deep.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“A happy child."

Daedalus sat, drank a swallow of wine. "For now, he is. He is too young to know himself a prisoner." Those white scars seemed to flare on his hands. "A golden cage is still a cage."

"And where would you go, if you might escape?"

"Wherever would have me. But if I may choose, Egypt. They are building things that make Knossos look like a mudflat. I have been learning the language from some of their traders on the docks. I think they would welcome us."

I looked into his good face. Not because it was handsome, but because it was itself, like fine metal, tempered and beaten for strength. Two monsters we had fought side by side, and he had not wavered. Come to Aiaia, I wanted to say. But I knew there was nothing for him there.

Instead I told him, "I hope you will get to Egypt one day.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“How about peaches, dear?” murmurs Madame Manec, and Marie-Laure can hear a can opening, juice slopping into a bowl. Seconds later, she’s eating wedges of wet sunlight.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“The bony figure of Death rides the streets below, stopping his mount now and then to peer into windows. Horns of fire on his head and smoke leaking from his nostrils and, in his skeletal hand, a list of newly charged with addresses.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See