Amr Q > Recent Status Updates

“People,” she said.
“People are our safe places. I have one: a person who’s a home and a world
to me.” Her eyes welled with tears. “And I can’t imagine losing him, as I
know you can’t imagine losing Kora.”

Lazlo?
He was at her side, and Sarai felt that as long as he was there, she could
do anything: See the world, make a home, help Minya.

His mind danced over the colors
of her because it could hardly fathom the whole. Her beauty annihilated
him.

She spoke bravely, but he could see she was afraid. “I wish I could go
with you.”
“I wish you could, too.”
“Can I do anything? Get you anything? You see, I’m the one who’s
useless.”
“Just be here,” said Sarai.
“Always.”

“You’re valuable no matter what you can do. And
you aren’t useless, as it happens.”

“Who else could protect my lip from
kissing?”
She drew back and looked up at him, eyebrows raised. “I think we both
know I’m a failure at that job.”
“You are terrible at it. But I don’t care.
There’s no one else I want not protecting my lip. The job is yours forever.”
“Forever? I hope it heals, though."

Sarai’s gift had brought her to him—into his mind
and his life—and he loved being in dreams with her. It was better than any
story he’d ever read. It was like being inside a story and writing it all around you, and not alone but with someone who just happened to be as
magical and beautiful as a fairy tale made real.

“Sarai,” he said, and his
voice was even rougher than in grief or desire. It sounded broken and put
back together with half its pieces missing. It sounded ravaged and sweet
and perfect. “I love you,” he said, and Sarai melted.

Lazlo didn’t see. His eyes were locked on Minya’s. “Listen to me,” he
said, savage. He wouldn’t have known his own voice. “There’s something
you’ve failed to consider. Sarai is the only thing keeping you safe. Gods
help you, if you let her soul go. There will be nothing to stop me from
ending you.”

The little girl held the thread of Sarai’s soul, and so
she as good as held the thread to his—and to his power, too.

He was Sarai’s.

Lazlo had given her the
moon on her wrist, the stars that bedecked it, the sun in its jar on the shelf
with the fireflies. He had even given her wings. But what she wanted most
in that moment wasn’t the sky. It was the world and broken things

Strange
the dreamer was an artist, too, and he was the antidote to vile.

Some things, thought Sarai, were too lovely to devour, while others were
too lovely not to.

She
touched the tip of her nose to the tip of his. Shaped by fairy tales, she
thought, which made it better than every straight nose in the world. “But
there is one thing you can do for me.”
“What is it?” asked Lazlo. “Anything.”

“The sun. I still haven’t forgiven it.”
“I want to catch it in a jar and put it away with the fireflies.”
“The moon on a bracelet and the sun in a jar,” said Sarai. “We really
wreak havoc on the heavens, don’t we?”

Why not nighttime forever?
Lazlo and nighttime forever.

“I know a human could stand the sight of
me, Minya, because there is one who can see me.”
The words were out. She couldn’t take them back. A flush spread up her
chest and neck. “And he stands the sight of me quite well.”

"She couldn’t decide between them, and so she took them all. The dreamer paid
for them out of a silly sort of green brocade purse, and in the next instant
they were gleaming at her wrist like a charm bracelet."

“Don’t tell anyone,” Isagol answered. “I was goddess of the moon.” She
whispered the rest like a secret. “But then I lost it.”
“You lost the moon?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” she said. “It was stolen.”
“We can go to the moon shop for another,” the dreamer offered. “If you
like.”
“Is there a moon shop? All right.”
And so the dreamer and the goddess went shopping for a moon.

“Feral, how could hate ever not be bad?”
“If it’s deserved. If it’s vengeance.”

What’s the point of being
old if you can’t beleaguer the young with your vast stores of wisdom?”
“And what’s the point of being young if you can’t ignore all advice?”

I want to be taken by a library as well!