Selene > Recent Status Updates

Oh, verpiss dich.” I pulled out the gold pistol tucked in my breast pocket and shot Ferenc neatly in the head.

“I thought I was supposed to be the poet. Though, without you, there would be no poetry. I would have only the harsh lens of my own worldview. I wouldn’t be able to see the beauty of life, because I only see it through your eyes. Muse is too simple a word for what you are to me.” My mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “And yet, life after life, you take away the possibility of the cottage by the sea.”

medical student with floppy blond hair and the general aura of the very hungover. As he fumbled with his stethoscope behind Dr. Onwuemezi, the doctor’s impatience wafted off her in such severe waves that I was genuinely quite fearful for the student’s safety.

Far from it,” replied Dylan with an earnest beam. “I don’t know anyone more alive.” He reached out a hand, then withdrew it again. “I was going to ruffle your hair, but you don’t have any.” “Twat,” snapped Gracie, but she was laughing once more.

“On that note, I brought you something,” he said, scooping his backpack off the floor. Unzipping it carefully, he pulled out something wrapped in brown parcel paper, tied with a frayed length of twine in a clumsy bow. There was a mud print on the front that looked suspiciously like a pig’s hoof.

OMG HELP 😂 I LOVE THE WORD SUSPICIOUSLY IN THESE CONTEXTS

“At least she’s trying.” I felt a pang of affection for our sad, lovely mum. “She’s a good egg,” said Dylan, deadpan. Gracie groaned. “What?” Dylan looked fake-affronted. “I really thought that would crack you up.” “I hate you,” Gracie said, which was her way of insinuating the exact opposite.

Has she made any more jokes?” I whispered to Gracie, gesturing toward Mum. Gracie nodded gravely. “She handed me a baseball cap and called it my ‘egg cup.’ It was embarrassing for everyone involved.”

Instead, we had blades to the throat. Poetry books found frozen in the taiga. Arrows through the heart. Great monuments burned to the ground. A sense of both permanence and impermanence. Transient, ephemeral, but also somehow enduring. enduring.

Their personhood was not as simple as a list of definitive attributes and traits, and they had no fixed body to marvel over. What fascinated me, what compelled me so profoundly, was that theirs was a soul in the truest sense. A way of thinking, a way of feeling, their emotional contours shifting with culture and history and experience but never yielding entirely

this is how bees make honey: they suck careful nectar from open flowers and bring their bounty back to the hive, where they kiss it from mouth to mouth until it runs thick and sweet. every parent we have ever loved walked this glorious earth gathering nectar from the flowers of their lives, kissing it into the mouths of their children, and now the honey is ours. —AUTHOR UNKNOWN

"I imagine it's quite a change for you, considering you don't often have a reason to speak with anyone of prestige," Signa offered with an innocent smile.

AGGHH SIGNA MY HEART
QUEEN BEHAVIOR

HELP CHAPTER 16 IS HILARIOUS

It took everything within Blythe and her dark soul not to fall into a fit of hysteria. She covered her mouth, muffling the amusement that threatened to overtake her.
"No sound effects!" Olivia scolded, which was all it took for
Blythe to fully lose herself and double over in laughter.
"'ve no idea, Aris," she cackled. "Could you perhaps be a dog?" Her laughter, in turn, got Elijah laughing.

Though Blythe had already guessed what Aris might be attempt-ing, she told him sweetly, "You're going to need to give us a bit more
than that, darling."
The murder in his eyes was palpable.
With the longest sigh Blythe had ever heard anyone draw in their lite, Aris lowered himselt onto his knees. He kept his hands up like he was begging, looked her dead in the eye, and said in a low
voice, "Woof."

Aris swiveled to face Blythe. "No." His voice was as hollow as his
eyes. "Absolutely not. I'm not doing this."

He stood as if he'd just been told that his childhood pet had died.

"Thank you, Olivia." Blythe beamed.
"Yes, thank you, Olivia," Aris grumbled, likely regretting his decision to give the woman free rein to act as a lady-in-waiting.
Blythe didn't let his glumness get to her;

"It's charades, Aris. It isn't going to kill you." His huff was a withering, pathetic thing. "Oh, but 1 wish it
would."
Blythe took him by the wrist, content as hatred oozed from her husband's every pore.
"I detest you and your entire lineage," he spat.
Blythe patted his arm. "That's the spirit! Be sure to put all that
fire into your gameplay."

No longer able to contain herself, this time Blythe did laugh.
"Why on earth do you look as though you're preparing for war?"
"Because I might as well be, you monstrous girl."

I HAVE LIED FOR YOU," ARIS WHISPERED. "I HAVE SPUN A KINGDOM out of thin air. I have fed you and tolerated you, and have put up with all of your nonsense. But this is where I draw the line."

mum called me a hard-boiled egg last night
she looked like she wanted to die from discomfort
why do I feel like this was your doing

-Gracie Blythe

And so, in the absence of any abiding religious convictions, this was the one blind faith I had: that love was a physical force, and it was never wasted. Once it was called out into the universe, it would echo back to us forever.

In truth, a part of me believed that everyone I’d ever loved would come back to me again in another life, in another form. They wouldn’t necessarily know we had met before, and nor would I, but that energy would still thrum between us, that recycled love, that historic bond.

summer deepening always into autumn, winter brightening always into spring, growing new flowers from old roots, and I thought of how it feels to hold you, each season of you, our love blossoming afresh, year after year, century after century, new flowers from old roots, an eternal seed from which life will always bloom —AUTHOR UNKNOWN

as I gazed upon the first bramble, I thought of how the world reinvents itself year after year, century after century,

“What did you…?” Say, what did you say? I begged my mouth to finish the question, to stay awake long enough to hear this new answer, but I was slipping, slipping, slipping, and there, in a grave colder than Mars, next to the soul I’d loved for a hundred lives and lost in every one, we took our final breath beneath the indifferent stars.

“I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you,” he whispered, hoarse, tortured. My throat ached. “I love you, and I have loved you, and I will love you.” Then, very seriously, he added, “I hope we don’t have to eat frozen reindeer in the next life.”

Social media - it eroded democracy and gamified conflict, the way it splintered attention spans and polarised opinions to dangerous extremes, the way it devalued art and fed the leeches of artificial intelligence, the way it jacked adrenaline and manipulated dopamine and narrowed human awe to a singular flickering point.