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I was brought up by stringent believers and their faith exhausted and abused.
It was a perfect haven for a woman like myself, unskilled and innocent, singed by the altar fire of her church and desperate for her own life.
when you leave an intelligent child to their own devices, they have to devote themselves to something.
I felt, at that age, if time could put lines on my face, I could put them on my body.
“If they don’t let me bathe, I will just ask them to kill me,” said Mischa.
I am not one to believe one’s happiness should be denied to avoid an afterlife in a make believe hell.
It never goes away,” I said. “The shame. All of our pleasure is tinged with it. Especially for women.
I could never have shame for what we are. My soul be damned by Rodwin. She is worth a torturous afterlife.”
The two of us showed love to each other with banter. Today, we were saying to each other, ‘I’m still here and so are you.’
She made a patient face at me, as if I was a pest that she happened to love.
A good mother worries. All mothers do, but the best ones never stop.”
she was thinking of small things because it was easier than to think of the large things we had lost
“Do not do that,” he said, sighing. “Do what?” “Call me ‘husband’ in that way. Like it is another word for nuisance.”
I had never been good enough for the church.
“Well, what do you say when you see something that is beautiful?” He pressed his lips together and turned his face to me. “Well. I just look at it.”
“We can’t have you die on us,” Mischa had chided, her version of friendship.
“I am grateful for the five of you,” she said, looking at the rest of us and away from River next to her. Then drolly, she said, “There is no one with whom I would rather be kidnapped.”
“I have tried to think before speaking,” he responded. “You must now try not to solve every quandary by yourself. You should ask for things when you need them.” “I don’t want to be a burden,” I whispered. “You are not a burden. You are my wife.”
I felt childlike and old at the same time. I felt surprise and steadiness simultaneously. I had claimed it. I had demanded it and she had delivered. I had magic.
“I will ask him to bed me,” answered Mischa. “I am not a woman men turn down.” “Because they are afraid of you,” I offered.
“You are like a snarling wolf guarding a kill you have yet to bite.”
“If thought and deed were the same, then I have kissed you already, Edith. Countless kisses.”
He drew his lost breath into his lungs. “Edith,” he said as he released it, his voice so peaceful after such ruination.
“You have healed wounds I did not know still bled.”
Hinnom was, and is, a force of nature. You cannot just fall in love with a storm. You are asking for the storm, people like that, for them to break you.”
“I am not myself with you and yet, I am entirely myself.
I seek you. Do you not see that?” He was as stone in my arms. But I had stone magic.
I had once wished my feet were smaller, but now I was grateful only to have feet that took me places, that allowed me to stand here with him.
“Why would I ever call you ‘beautiful’ when I can call you Edith? Your name is interchangeable to that word’s meaning. In it, the scope of everything I wish to look at in this world is outlined.”
You are allowed your hurt. And anguish and joy can be in the same house without crowding each other.”
“I cannot promise you much. But I promise this. Wherever we go, wherever we live, you shall have windows.”
“In a field, in an alcove, on our bed, on our floor, at the base of a mountain, in the heart of a forest, at the edge of the sea, I will always want you.”
I did not want to let go of my anger, but when one is in love, holding on to anything else is a slippery affair.
he spoke not with the natural volume of a man trying to be loud, but with the echo of a god’s thunderclap.
“A war to end all wars.” “That is what every warmonger has ever said.”
That is when I knew I would never not love you. That is when I knew I would be in love with my wife for the remainder of my winters, until my death and if spirits and ghosts exist, then I would also be in love thereafter.”
though you can be fast to your ire, you are also fast to finding accord again.
I thought you were a mysterious woman who I would never understand and I thought to myself, ‘I would like to die trying to understand her,’ that that would be enough, that that was a fine life to have lived, as a man trying to understand his wife.”
I remember your blood running down your arm, you were running through the surf, jellyfish shining around your knees. You were fearless. You were so magnificent that night, Edith. I was exultant to be yours. Even if you had not chosen me for a husband, I was your husband.”
Do not put your pride in front of the cause.
My mother says all women are mothers in different ways, that we all give birth, just not all to children. She says some women give birth to revolutions, to movements, to sanctuary, to art, to brilliance.
Some women, like my mother, give birth the traditional way and by making art. Though she began her career as an illuminator working in small detail, she flourished as a muralist in Tintar and the Shark’s Keep walls are illustrated with the wonders of The Farthest Four, scenes from Nyossa and the ocean, swirls of color to represent air and bright red shapes to represent fire. Some women, like Thalia, grasp their womanhood out of thin air and make it their own, for themselves, then turn that inner strength outward and create shelter and refuge for others. Some women like my aunt willingly throw
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