Nikki > Recent Status Updates

She no longer sees life as a long, linear ladder with the beginning, middle, and end. Instead, she considers how life is like a spiraling trail up a mountain. Each circling lap represents a learning cycle, the same lesson at a slightly higher elevation.

Afterward, Wren realizes she herself is the mountain she’s been climbing all along.

Definitions of right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark become more nebulous and subjective in uncommon circumstances.

What remained strong in the deep, the hard times, was love as an effort, a doing, a conscious act of will.

“Oh, that’s a God thing.”

The atmospheric shimmering of greatest happiness was theirs to borrow, not keep.

She is one of those kids who is imperious to cold, hunger, and time.

Or, after time, is every relationship just a little bit broken?

Fearlessness like jumping into a body of water without first testing its temperature.

“We’re not feeding the monkey.

The main ingredient in transformation was not magic. It was pain.

“When they teach you that matter is not created or destroyed, only rearranged? Maybe it’s us.

I and J belonged together as either siblings or longtime lovers.

“You, who can make a spreadsheet about almost anything.

He also married her vast unknowns.

Wren wrote her dream: A Medium-Sized Life.

It was that she knew how easily they could fail each other.

He appreciated organization as a concept but never remembered to practice it.

Nearing age 35, she finally realized the questions would never end but rather, transmute and graft themselves into different personal topics.

“Daniel, I do not believe that God had nothing better to do today than trap me in your driveway.”

Love follows you. It goes where you go. It does what it wants.

“I measured the Patrón with my heart.”

“She was his nonnegotiable.”

Sometimes family is found. I’d found mine in him.

The universe had dipped its snow globe again.

“Dick pics are community property unless you’re staking a claim on the guy who owns it. You’ve got a little flag that you just planted on Daniel’s peen, it’s waving in the breeze and it says Ali on it.”

“Give up some of your fucks and see how much easier things are.”

The remnants of small moments in her life that stayed with her forever. Proof of a thumbprint on her soul.

“We’re all strong-ass women until a smoke alarm starts chirping at 3 AM.”

It was like finding out a plant you killed was alive after all and just needed water.

“Grace costs you nothing.”

Fuck the quiche.

“Do you understand that I don’t care how big or small this world is, that you are the center of mine?

Small, slight, unimportant Joan. Just one person of five billion, on a small planet orbiting a small star, in a humble galaxy, one of billions of galaxies. She is so insignificant and yet, look what God had given her. Look at what no one will ever be able to take away.

Maybe they had not asked for too much.

But to love her was to be always saying goodbye to the girl she used to be and falling in love again with the girl she was becoming.

“Happiness is so hard to come by. I don’t understand why anyone would begrudge anyone else for managing to find some of it.”

The rules of society came for everyone eventually.

Day in and day out, the Earth keeps spinning and revolving and sailing through the Milky Way.

She could feel the lightness in her head that would feel heavy tomorrow.

I want to spend my energy thinking not of how my actions might be frowned upon by a man in the sky, but how my actions affect every living and non-living thing around me. Life is God.

When you’re flying a plane, you can’t see people on the ground. From up there, everyone is so alike, they have so much in common, and they can’t see it.

She’d been surprised to find that Coors Light was delicious.

“When somebody’s too smooth, there’s nothing to grab on to. Now that you got a little edge to you, I can hang on.

In a crisis of this magnitude, you are best served by evaluating second by second.

“Nobody is one thing all the time.”

“When we learn about the constellations, we also learn how earlier generations made sense of the world.”

“You have to have something on the line, for it to be called character.”

When you look out at the sky, the farther you can see, the farther back you are looking in time. The space between you and the star is time. It is to witness time unfolding.

The hum of the wind drowned out everything except the sound of her own voice in her mind, which was such a gift. She had always been her greatest friend and guide.

It is also the relief I feel that those stars are immovable. We can get it right or get it wrong, love, and lose love, and still the Summer Triangle will point south. And in that way, I know everything will be some type of okay.

For such an adventurous job, it can be achingly routine. There are no cowboys here.

“And I’m scared, but in a way I’ve never really been before.”

But I also believe in it because I want to believe in it. I want to spend my energy thinking not of how my actions might be frowned upon by a man in the sky, but how my actions affect every living and non-living thing around me. Life is God.

“When you’re flying a plane, you can’t see people on the ground. From up there, everyone is so alike, they have so much in common, and they can’t see it.”

In a crisis of this magnitude, you are best served by evaluating second by second.

“Nobody is one thing all the time.”

“When we learn about the constellations, we also learn how earlier generations made sense of the world.”

Joan could feel the lightness in her head that would feel heavy tomorrow.

“Don’t thank me for doing the bare minimum.”

The hum of the wind drowned out everything except the sound of her own voice inside her mind. Which was such a gift. She had always been her greatest friend, her greatest guide.

She’d been surprised to find that Coors Light was delicious.

“When somebody’s too smooth, there’s nothing to grab on to. Now that you e got a little edge to you, I can hang on.”

“And I’m scared, but in a way I’ve never really been before.”

“You can’t study space without studying the physics of space. And time. Or math. Or anthropology in the history of humans’ understanding of the stars. Or mythology for that matter.”

“You have to have something on the line, for it to be called character.”

The space between you and the star is time. It is to witness time unfolding.

It is also the relief I feel that those stars are immovable. They are so much bigger than us. We can get it right or get it wrong, love, and lose the ones we love, and still the Summer Triangle will point south. And in that way, I know everything will be some type of okay— as impossible as that can seem sometimes.

For such an adventurous job, it can be achingly routine. There are no cowboys here.

“It is hard, and it hurts, but I were to stop, if I were to let this loom or the spindle go silent…then there would be no Hope shining in the Void.”

“You got him kicked out, didn’t you?”

But with winnowing, it never felt as if she were actually traveling anywhere. She wished it, and there she was.

She had always been drawn to the untamed, wild things of the world.

From fear, yes. I was honest enough with myself to admit that. But also from the sheer unleashing of it, as if I were a racehorse freed from my own, the image in my mind a dashing vision that I sprinted to keep up with.

And in its wake, a sort of quiet followed, as if it were a layer of snow blanketing the earth. Clearing away what was beneath.

“I get jealous sometimes. What you two have, it’s the legends they spin us when we’re children. About the glory of the mating bond.I thought it was all bullshit. Then you two came along.”

That I hadn’t heard from Feyre yet told me enough: still asleep. And as tempting as it was to wake her just to hear the sound of her voice, I had little desire to have my balls nailed to the wall for disrupting her sleep.

“After all this…I think the world needs more gardens.”

I felt it down the bond, sparkling brighter than the entirety of Starfell.

“And will you come with me? On this adventure—and all the rest?
“Always.”

The stars seemed to burn brighter in response, creeping closer to watch.

Every sound and smell and image planted itself in my mind, so many that it would take a lifetime-several of them- to paint.

Her eyes did not stray from Cassian’s death-dance.

“So dramatic, human-heart.”

“Only you can decide what breaks you.”

“It’s a rare person to face who they truly are and not run from it-not be broken by it.

I leaned back into him, unafraid of that power, of the male who held me.

And I knew that the laughter…it was in part because of defiance and gratitude.

I almost said ‘Fine’, but…”I’m still figuring out what to feel.”

To the stars who listen—and the dreams that are answered.

It would be like putting jewelry on a lion.

“It always makes me reassess myself more than them.”

“It’s fine if you drink directly from it,” was all Mor said.

Mor striding through the felled Hybern soldiers to make sure any survivors…stopped surviving.

If the bond sometimes felt like a living band of light, it now had turned into a bridge of ice-kissed obsidian.

But for my home, I would clean my blades, and wash the blood from my skin. And I would do it again and again and again.

There’s a certain margin where cruelty bonds with affection in a marriage.

The Walking Billboard’s voice was no exception to his outift, is accent sponsored by Monster Energy drink.

If a killer is ever revealed with more than a leaflet of pages remaining against your right thumb, they cannot be the real killer.

I’ve been told I was, apparently, hysterical.

It was a limited time offer; the weather was only having a smoke and would return invigorated.

An anger hangover; when you argue over nothing and realize in the light of morning that you just look stupid.

You get your name back when you die- all of it.

What a disappointment that must be, to be robbed of the fist-bashing. I hope, when I go, I get the chance to rage against my death.

Time was not only borrowed, it was charging interest.

Marc half grunted, in the way that older men often try to express emotion; by shooting out anything that could be constructed as affection as fast as possible, like a sneeze.

Family is gravity.

I am normally resolute in declining any invitation that comes with an Excel spreadsheet attached. Evasive as I am, even I can’t argue with bold type.

Looking like he’d spent time in an adventure store checking his watch.

Wind was cruel; patted me down like I owed it money.

Michael looked at her like a parent looks at a child who’s interrupted their glass of wine to show them a somersault.