mia moraru’s Reviews > Freshwater > Status Update

‘’…never alone, as alone as you could want to be—anything, everything we ever wanted, even nothingness, if we chose that, even ends. I started crying at the freedom of it all…’

‘…I could feel their age press on me. They were older than even Yshwa, old as forever…Here, with them, I bent.!

‘Even her flesh belonged to Ala, for, as we have said, it is on her lips that humans are born, and there they live until they die. … And to be named is to gain power, let alone to be named thrice over.’

‘Asughara was the blade, forever flirting with the softness of people’s throats.’

‘…he made her laugh and that there was so much peace with him, she could almost see it in the air.’

‘But I loved him and that made me more than human to me. Love is transformative that way. Like small gods, it can bring out the prophet in you.’

‘When the Ada got married, perhaps it would have been better if she married someone like that. But she was insisting on being human and she married a human. He was a force of a human, true, with storm eyes and hands like a future, but he was still just a human. We should have saved her for a god.’

‘…the words under the words, the water in the water.’

‘“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.’