Kindle Notes & Highlights
It was also at this time that I really delved into tabletop role-playing games. Like the theater, they offered me and my friends the ability to write our own stories and bring them to life for one another.
Into the stars ;;;;;
As I was lowered into the scorched, blackened earth, high in the mountains, that was what I remembered most: even the supreme sun may handle the smallest thing with tender care.
Is this how my father feels each time he loses a follower to the long night of death? No, he does not mourn, for his faithful join him in celestial rest. But maybe, I think, this is how he felt leaving me on this side of the divine gate. Left behind. An earthen promise as he rose skyward. Surely the sun’s heart ached, too, leaving his child alone. In this is the only consolation. That whether you’re fated to remain or destined to go, pain awaits. But it is pain shared by both parties, and maybe more bearable because of it. Maybe loss will always hurt, no matter who you are—god, mortal, or
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And yet, life, beautiful and precious, would not be either if it lasted forever. As the old man’s successor said at his funeral, “Sunrise would not be so sweet if we did not endure the cold night before it. Sunset would not be so heartbreaking if it lingered forever on the horizon.”
Together, love and conviction make a potent alchemy. But in the end, neither was stronger than justice or vengeance.
Why should this simple act feel like privilege? Yet it does, giving them the gift of rest. Maybe it is because I was there with them, then, now, and always. That every day, we wake and feel keenly the pain of our losses, the weight of our grief. These things do not leave. But they do grow with you. I know. I know.
I am the Sun Tree, and as long as I stand, I will keep watch. I will witness. I will do my best to keep Whitestone and those who call it home safe, just as Percival and his wife do now. Together, the three of us watch the sun set. Night falls, and, one by one, constellations begin to dot Exandria’s sky. The night has never frightened me. It just means there will be dawn tomorrow.
I’m a songwriter, improviser, performer; you’d think that would mean I could find the words. This isn’t romance or bawdy lyrics or tales of heroes saving the world. It’s my life, and I’m finally realizing I’ve never known how to live it.
“Just at the very end of the section. You’ve written, ‘That was one villain vanquished, but the poor souls across Exandria who required my aid remained innumerable. I turned to the sunset and began the journey toward my next big adventure.’ Let’s try instead—” Tary scratched out the line and narrated aloud as he rewrote: “‘My most trusted companion, Doty, and I turned to the sunset and began the journey toward our next big adventure.’” Creak, said Doty. “Yes,” said Tary. “I think it’s much better like that, too.”
“Pathetic,” he repeats. “Look at ’em, fighting each other for scraps. Your Herd is hungry, Thunderlord. Too fucking hungry. You best feed ’em soon, if you don’t want ’em eating each other next.”
#Yellowjackets
Fuck family. All family does is disappoint. Even the soft, unknown little thing growing in Worra’s womb is just the promise of a lie. Stay yolked and unformed, little one, he thinks. Stay a dream. A dream can’t disappoint. Flesh, though? Flesh always fails in the end. Fate can’t be found in blood and womb-water. Fate is what you make, what you take, reaching into the ribs of the world and wrenching out its still-steaming heart.
And then Kima became what she had always been meant to be: Lady Kima of Vord. Her life was no longer about her. She was a weapon, a sword with a purpose, and she would be honed to flawlessness, no matter how much work or how many years it took. Of course, the more you sharpen a sword, the weaker it becomes.
I’ve never once heard you say that you’re doing something for yourself. It’s always for someone else; always for the dragon, or for justice, or to protect me, or whomever we’re fighting for. But what about you, Kima?” She paused. “What do you want for you?”
Kima had knelt before, to honor her god. She saved the gesture for moments of true devotion. There was no denying what she saw in Allura’s face then. And there was no time for Kima to wonder if her desire to worship Allura in turn would destroy her pact with her god. She found, in that moment, she did not care.
“You have spent your life in service to others: to me, first, and then to those in need. But hear me when I say this, little lion: Your rage is worthy. Your anger at the injustices of this world is worthy. You do not have to do anything for me, Lady Kima. Your existence is devotion enough. Your truest power comes from your faith in yourself, not in me.”
“How could you ever hope to care for those around you if you leave care for yourself by the wayside entirely?” said her god. “You have fought well. I was right to choose you as my champion. But that’s the key, I fear: I chose you. I trust you. Will you not take that trust and use it to make yourself whole? To provide love, care, and protection not only for others, but for yourself—and, in doing so, allow yourself to help make those around you whole?”
STOP IT RN
“Survival is a choice. Making something of yourself is a choice. And you can’t just do it once and be done with it. Every morning you have to wake up and choose it again.” He stood back, squaring his shoulders and opening his arms wide. “So, Kynan. What choice are you going to make?”
“What if I can’t do it?” he whispered. “What if I fuck up again?” “You almost certainly will,” said Jarett, but the way he said it didn’t feel like a blow. It was comforting, in a way. “We all do. You can’t grow unless you fuck up. Just like you can’t be brave without first knowing fear.” Kynan swallowed. “And if you have … a lot of fear?” Jarett reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “Then you have an even greater opportunity to rise above it.”
How does one raise a child whose first rune appeared as their milk teeth began to fall? Perhaps a sterner hand or straighter answers would have made his sorcerous adolescence less maddening. But then again, how could the Geddmores have known what it felt like for Shaun to push an unfriendly breeze away from himself as easily as shutting a door? Sweet, serene Opesa did her best to guide her son toward an understanding that magic is a conversation with the world, just as growing up is a conversation with oneself.
This time, he doesn’t hear Gilmore’s voice in his doubts; but, then again, that voice was always his. He leans in, and the illusion of Vax does the same. Something in the strangeness of Vax’s expression piques Shaun, and it takes him a long while to find the root of it in the lack of tension around the half-elf’s eyes and mouth. Shaun’s imaginings lack the real Vax’s guardedness, and in the moment when he realizes just how much they both wear their respective masks, the storm breaks loose.
He weeps for the person he might be—the rune-wrapped man that loves and fights and truly lives—as he tucks his boundless potential away into his stores brick by brick. He thinks of the success he chases—outposts across the map outfitting the adventurers and heroes of Exandria with arcane workings crafted by his clever, restless hands—and he weeps harder.
The winds of change that blew him to Emon are no match for strong bricks and deep roots. It is a comfort known acutely and intimately by Gilmore in this moment of shelter from the tempest. But for all the safety and security of strong walls, there is a trade-off in not seeing the high gray sky or feeling the sun-warmed earth.
He continues to lie on the pristine and polished wooden floor of his shop, looking up and imagining. He dreams of adventure and romance. He dreams of unknown dangers through doors that will close with every new wall he builds. He dreams of feeling the curiosity and surprise he saw in Ingvie’s eyes this morning. He dreams of something new. And that’s when he places the aching grief that has thundered in his ribs; it’s not just the sting of thwarted romance, but the hope that somehow love—this love—could save him from the fear of a known future. A road of safety and softness that he’s still too
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The storm has passed, yes. But there’s no need to pretend it never happened. It rained. And things might look a little rough right now, but the sun always returns.
Looking over each of their suddenly terrified but still battle-ready faces—even Juni’s, tight with pain as the poison set in—he saw echoes of Vox Machina in the set of their jaws and the fight in their eyes. These cubs belonged to Vex and Percy. To Pike and Scanlan (and Grog, really). To Keyleth. And they were also Trinket’s. He had crawled through the Belly of Dragons, he had witnessed the fall of a god, and he had learned a thing or two about how to put unruly creatures in their place. He wasn’t going to lose a single one of his cubs to these second-rate kidnappers, poisoned or not. He had
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Trinket grumbled, full of understanding and sympathy. “Exactly,” Vex agreed, carefully pulling the bows out of Trinket’s fur. “Anyone can fight a dragon with the right tools, but parenting isn’t for the weak.” Trinket nodded and flicked his ears.
