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Hope was a beautiful thing, Naomi thought, looking up through the silent trees, the clean, cold air filling her lungs. It was the most beautiful part of her work when it was rewarded with life. The worst when it brought only sorrow.
Are the stories we tell ourselves true or based on what we dream them to be?
No one ever told you what to do when love went away. It was always about capturing love, and keeping love. Not about watching it walk out the door to die alone rather than in your arms.
Love wasn’t about numbers, Naomi realized then. It wasn’t about selling yourself or wanting anything in return. It wasn’t about hoping for safety. It was just— That purr.
Each and every time Naomi found a child she told them it would be okay. She encouraged them to be whole with themselves, to never forget and yet look forward. She could not begin to imagine such peace for herself.
“Hope springs eternal. Just remember: so does evil. Sometimes they are impossible to tell apart.”
Everyone needs faith: faith that even though the world is full of evil, a suitor will come and kiss us awake; faith that the girl will escape the tower, the big bad wolf will die, and even those poisoned by malevolence can be reborn, as innocent as purity itself.
never trust anyone they didn’t know. And even then, she cautioned, there are only some you really know. They were to never believe the first thing someone told them, or to assume a badge was a badge. Trust the ones you know and love, Mrs. Cottle said, over and over again. Other than that? She said: Go. Go explore life, revel in it, roll in it and come up happy.
“Stop thinking that you have to know everything to understand it.”
Her entire past came up to strangle her, to tell her that love could be something else—a trap to keep her from escaping.
“I think the world is beautiful,”
Do you know fear? Snow girl did. The inside of fear, snow girl knew, was like the inside of a wet animal pelt. The fresh hide was ribboned with white, glossy with fat, the feel of muscle not far away—the pot where it bubbles. That exposed, stretched skin. That is how fear feels. When you have been gutted from the inside out and lost everyone and you are trying to replace your insides. When someone could just come and place their hand there, feeling your wetness, and you hope the hand is safe. That is what fear feels like.
This is something I know: no matter how far you have run, no matter how long you have been lost, it is never too late to be found.
