Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

by V.E. Schwab

She smiles and curtsies as she passes, a gesture with all the flair of a curse.

“Careful. In nature, beauty is a warning. The pretty ones are often poisonous.”

Everyone insists it is her purpose, and it drives her mad, the idea that the shape of her body determines the shape her life must take.

If, if, if, and she knows that way lies madness but once she starts, she can’t stop her mind from going down the hundred ways it could have ended instead of how it did.

She stares out the window, longing for the rolling grounds of Clement Hall, but all she sees is London proper, stone and brick as far as the eye can see. Here and there, the briefest glimpse of grass or tree, a bit of nature under siege.

“The world will try to make you small. It will tell you to be modest, and meek. But the world is wrong. You should get to feel and love and live as boldly as you want.”