Amanda

“It was a market. She hung back as she found it, better to take it in, to manage her overloaded senses a moment before she tried to step closer, step in. Market stalls laden with the bright fruits of high summer, with verdant banks of vegetables, glistening with newly caught fish. The multilayered sweetness of every fruit in season— some she knew: apricots, grapes, greengages; some she didn’t. The slick saline memory of the deep, from the arrested body of each fish and crab. Each new scent she encountered was a puzzle, a challenge to the senses, to her memory. But there were a dozen here, a hundred. She reeled a moment. Steadied herself, feet to cobbles. Roasted meat and toasted pastry. The funk of horse manure, the bitter tang of coffee. The many-colored perfumes of late-morning townsfolk, sweat and cotton, youth and age, hair and soap, garlic-on-skin and hunger-on-breath.”
― Catherine Kurtz, Feast

“You know, it's a little sad when you have to explain the punch line of a joke, Chan."
"I only explain my jokes," I retort, in the haughtiest tone I can muster, "to those too stupid to get them.”
― Keshe Chow, Strange Familiars

“My waters rise from the source, deep in the earth, from secret caverns, hidden pockets of spirit. A rumble of bass moves through limestone tunnels, upward and onward, around curves, gathering chords, minor and major, until out flows a song, azure and cerulean, plucked from sunshine and moonbeam.
Some say my music echoes your soul, harmonizes with fears and longings, calls forth your own song, until it spills out in liquid jewels.
If, of course, you are worthy.
My waters sing of death too, a low drumbeat that rattles the bones.
There are those of you who bring out the river dragon in me.
And my gaping mouth swallows you whole.”
― Laura Resau, The River Muse

“All around the table, voices seemed to drop; the name Brocéliande itself breathed out dark mystery. Men told wild tales of that ancient forest. That the fair-folk, the korriganed, had lived long in its shadows. That an unwary traveler might stray into the Lost Lands, only to vanish forever, or return a century hence, still young while his whole world had spun out from under his feet. And they also did say, with more force than mere rumor, that Brocéliande was one of the last, best places for men to hunt unicorns.
A unicorn was the noblest and rarest prey in Christendom. The fire-drakes, if ever they had lived, had not been seen in living memory, and one could not hunt sea-drakes. Sea-drakes hunted men. At least, that's what seamen said when ships did not come back. But now and again, one heard credible tales of a unicorn.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters