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Familiarity could look very much like love from a certain angle, if one didn’t look too hard.
“Politics,” grunted Mash. “Easy to blame foreign folk for anything going wrong, when they’re not here to say otherwise. Easier still when they look and talk funny, and don’t pray to the Mother or her Sons.”
“That sounds a hard way to live. Is it not…lonely?” “There’s worse things than loneliness in this world,” said Tao quietly.
“All cats are slightly magical, don’t you know? It’s why they’re so smug all the time.
Aye, our lives are short and shaped by circumstance, and maybe we can’t control most of what’s to come. But we can control how we feel. We can savor the sweetness of a blackberry scone, and the company of our friends, and the warmth of the summer wind at night, and be grateful for it. We can be nothing, and choose to be miserable about it, like you—or we can be nothing, but choose to be happy, and let that be purpose enough. Which sounds more worthwhile to you?”
“Oh, but you weren’t just trying to be friendly, and you know it! That’s the thing—I’m not a…a…recipe, where you just follow the steps and put in the right words and the right gestures and out comes a relationship, fully baked!”
“I am sad that you have lost so much,” said the old man, empty hand falling back against his side. “I hope you find new joys to take their place.”
“Heroes still had to earn coin and eat stale bread and shit behind bushes, didn’t they? They just leave those bits out of the stories when they tell them.”
“It’s like a heist!” Silt said with enthusiasm. “Except instead of gems or gold, we’re stealing back our friend.” “I think that’s called kidnapping,” said Kina.
“After all—are you the person you want to be now?” “I’m…not sure. But I think I’m getting closer.”
Sometimes stories have to end so we can go back to real life.”
