Nabila Tabassum Chowdhury’s Reviews > Gliff > Status Update

"There is no way she is back, or anywhere near here.
There would have been no stopping her if she were.
No. Tell it like this:
whatever’s stopping her, there will be no stopping her."

"If I don’t find somewhere to shelter I’ll let the weather have me. Whatever."

"Now that I don’t exist I finally exist again."

"But fuck that, and them, because my briar self is back, prickly and twined and opening in me like a bush covered in wild opening blossom."

"Unbelievable believable hope, I say. Impossible, possible."

"Unbelievable believable hope. She told us the story of the mother, the person called Ayesha Falcon says, a mother so outraged by what’s happened to her child that this mother makes the mountains pick themselves up and move. And the story of the person who was really a swan and the swan who was really a person. And the traveller who, wherever they go, is accompanied by a flower that never dies."

"He’s mad. He’s a tyrant. He thinks he’s all-powerful.
But look at what real power is.
The person he turned into a mound of nothing but rubble, nothing but smoke and ash, is the opposite of destroyed.
His opponent is everywhere. His opponent is everything."

"His opponent is the water.
His opponent is the air.
His opponent isn’t just this world.
His opponent is the universe."

"Now he doesn’t want to eat.
He can’t eat anything.
He’s scared to drink.
He finds it hard to breathe.
He closes his eyes to the sky.
His opponent is the sky.
His opponent isn’t just inside the walls of whatever room he’s in.
His opponent is the walls.
His opponent is lapping at the side of his boat, at the side of his dock."

"He goes out for a walk with his dogs and his bodyguards. He worries that the ash might be in the air he’s breathing.
A maid pours him a glass of water at lunchtime. He worries about the ash in the water system."