mia moraru’s Reviews > Freshwater > Status Update

‘“Asughara,” he said, and my name sounded like a spring bubbling in his mouth.’

‘He was only human—what else could I expect, realistically? He wanted to pretend he was somehow better than he knew he was, he wasn’t ready to throw himself into sin. Humans find it easier to just lie and lie to themselves.’

‘Soren flew to Denmark, but he took her teddy bear, Hershey, with him. If you didn’t know him, you could call that cute, but he was such a thief, you know, he stole and stole and stole. Fucking bastard.’

‘I had arrived, flesh from flesh, true blood from true blood. I was the wilderness under the skin, the skin into a weapon, the weapon over the flesh. I was here. No one would ever touch her again.’

‘He got angry again. The boy was so predictable, so easy to provoke. Human beings are useless like that.’

‘There are rules. But these are gods and they move like heated water, so the rules are softened and stretched. The gods do not care. It is not them, after all, that will pay the cost.’

‘They meant to punish her: they took her children, they filled her mouth with sand. But it is only a fool who does not know that freedom is paid for in old clotted blood, in fresh readings of it, in renewed scarifications.’

‘…she was always a little uncertain when it came to her first daughter, what exactly to do with her, how to soothe such a force.’

‘They could not make us return because they were too far away, but they could do other things in the name of claiming our head. There is a method to this. First, harvest the heart and weaken the neck.’

‘That night was black as velvet tamarind, thick in a way that made people walk closer to each other, pressing in a pack that moved down to the village square.’