What Feasts at Night (Sworn Soldier, #2)

by T. Kingfisher

Death no longer shocks me, but I still prefer that it not visit my friends and acquaintances in my presence.

Grief does strange things to people, and there isn’t always a logical explanation.

Tomorrow, in my experience, is only worth worrying about when there’s something you can do about it.

“Is that not a blood-foot mushroom?” “Is that what it’s called here?” I asked weakly. He nodded. “We do not eat them,” he added. “They grow where the familiar sits.”

What the dying say is between them and God.

I sometimes think the fundamental disconnect with civilians is that they think a war is an event, something neatly bounded on either end by dates. What anyone who’s lived through one can tell you is that it’s actually a place. You’re there and then you leave, but places don’t stop existing just because you aren’t looking at them. The war’s still there. I don’t live in it anymore, but it’s right over there, just on the other side of … I don’t know. Something.

Nature creates horrors enough all by itself.

“Don’t mind us,” I said. “Just dealing with ghosts.” She digested this for a moment, then glanced up at the sky. “Nice weather for it,” she observed.

I’d learned long ago that things you don’t see can kill you, but at least the visions don’t stalk your mind for decades after.

They tell you that everything gets dark at the end, but it went white instead, the color of snow falling outside a window, and all I had to do was sit and watch it fall, forever.

“Something bad happened to both of us, too. We don’t deserve to fall apart either.”

The sounds of our laughter rang through the woods and nothing reached out to silence the echoes. And if they have not since died, so far as I know they are ringing there still.