Orion

“There you are,” says the single most unsettling voice I’ve ever heard. It sounds like a thousand voices speaking all at once, a chorus of all kinds of people stacked over top one another.

I turn and my stomach drops.

Standing there, in front of the door carved into the hillside, with her hundred eyes, and fiery wings, and row after row of razor-sharp teeth, is the goddess Vorgaine.”
― H.E. Edgmon, The Fae Keeper

“Zai’s promises about Faery being lush and alive? Maybe actually not a lie after all.

Because everything up here is green. The starlight overhead is just bright enough that I can still make out the sprawling scenery unfolding in front of us. Trees taller than anything I’ve ever seen, fields of wildflowers stretching on and on.

There are buildings, too, but they’re not like anything on Earth. They’re built right into the layout of the land, not disrupting anything to make space for themselves. There are homes nestled into the giant limbs of the trees, and tucked into massive tangles of flowers. Cavenia has led us to a massive door carved directly into a sloping hillside.

There are people moving around, still finishing up their days. Witches and fae move together, intermingling without concern. They’ve set up in what appears to be some kind of town center, gathered around a natural pool of water, where children splash.

It isn’t only witches and fae, either. Pixies dart in the air. A goblin helps a young fae patch a hole in the tree branch roof of their home. The sight of a hellhound with her two pups makes my heart ache for Boom, back in Asalin. [...]

Overhead, floating islands dot the sky, their undersides made of roots that hang loosely toward the ground. I can barely make out the greenery peeking over the edge on top. One of them has a waterfall flowing off the side, and the water seems to turn to mist before it reaches anyone below.

The islands look small from here, as high up as they are, but I know they must be huge. Know, because I can see dragons lounging on all of them. [...]

Behind us, I can make out the island we came from in the distance, the colossal divot of an empty ocean stretched between us. This far above it, I realize the island is shaped like a near-perfect crescent moon.”
― H.E. Edgmon, The Fae Keeper

“There’s an Etruscan word, saeculum, that describes the span of time lived by the oldest person present, sometimes calculated to be about a hundred years. In a looser sense, the word means the expanse of time during which something is in living memory. Every event has its saeculum, and then its sunset when the last person who fought in the Spanish Civil War or the last person who saw the last passenger pigeon is gone. To us, trees seemed to offer another kind of saeculum, a longer time scale and deeper continuity, giving shelter from our ephemerality the way that a tree might offer literal shelter under its boughs.”
― Rebecca Solnit, Orwell's Roses

“If it’s not about genetics, what is the bond?” Solomon asks, stepping forward with his forehead wrinkled in thought.
“This sacred fellowship exists between two people who are one another’s perfect mirrors. A reflection of all they are, and all they hope to be. These unions allow both parties to grow to their fullest potential. It is a beautiful and sacred thing. […] To equate them to romantic unions, or parental partnerships, would be to diminish their value. Certainly, they can become these things, but it is not inherent to what they are. […] Should a person turn from their mirror, they will never know themself for who they truly are. Should they do the unthinkable and shatter their mirror, they will be doomed to become the most warped and broken version of themself.”
― H.E. Edgmon, The Fae Keeper