Brilynn > Recent Status Updates

“One thing about being alive is that you can swim. Other things too – you can look at the clouds in the daytime and the stars at night and think of space as something you can't terribly care about conquering. Let it go on being spacious while it can. There's lots of time if you think in terms of light-years.”

“I wanted to stop and explain it to granny, tell her it was my fault for not knowing what I should have known – that people like us can't really be people and live happy lives. There's a cloud over us and we’re caught in it together, then, now, and always. Unless, God forbid, death part us.”

“For a while there we were quiet, perfectly quiet. The frogs weren't and the crickets weren't, but we were. We've sat quiet a lot in our time, and it was that way again. We could have been eleven years old, or seven, all at ease with our house behind us and the river bottom down there and everything together with itself.”

“I took a sip and a half of brandy and realised that no matter how elaborately you try substitutions you end up thinking about people. […] People again. They set the standard every time, and all lines of thought, however devious or confused, lead back to them and force them on your consciousness.”

The devil knows your name now, Galaxy Stern.

Darlington called to Cosmo, hoping the cat would make an appearance and he could offer some gift of gratitude, tribute in the form of tuna fish. But it seemed he would just have to be patient. Like all cats, Cosmo would arrive when he wanted to and not a moment before.

Was I ever here? Alex wondered. Had she died alongside Hellie? Had she ever been more than a ghost passing through this place?

You too, little star. The reply came fast, as if her mother had been waiting. But Mira had been waiting by the phone a very long time. For a call from the hospital, the cops, the morgue.

Some part of him had believed there was no world outside of Black Elm, no street at the end of the drive, no town beyond. He had forgotten how big things could feel, how crowded with life, how beautiful it could be to know the season, the month, the hour, to simply say, It is winter.

He’d probably kicked a few doors down in his time, without knowing what trouble might be waiting on the other side. But this wasn't really like that, was it? They were pilgrims. They were cosmonauts. They were as good as dead.

Had he thought there would be dignity in this? But this was what real magic looked like—indecent, decedent, perverse. Welcome to Yale. Sir, yes, sir.

He'd been to the jungles of the Amazon, explored the markets of Marrakesh. He'd seen into the mysteries of the world, but the mysteries of the world had taken no notice of him, and after all of it, he'd still ended up here. The doors had closed. The portals too. Lance Gressang wasn't going anywhere.

“It’s worse than that, Turner.” Alex flipped the mirror in her hand. “I want you to believe in magic.”

Take me back. Make me into someone who has never been done harm. Go as far as you can. Make me brand-new. No bruises. No scars. […] Alex didn't really know what she missed, only that she was homesick for something, maybe for someone, she’d never been.

I let you die. To save myself, I let you die.
That is the danger in keeping company with survivors.

“Magic had almost killed him, but in the end it had saved him. Just like in stories.”