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No need for guards when you can convince people to collaborate in their own internment.
When a slave rebels, it is nothing much to the people who read about it later. Just thin words on thinner paper worn finer by the friction of history. (“So you were slaves, so what?” they whisper. Like it’s nothing.) But to the people who live through a slave rebellion, both those who take their dominance for granted until it comes for them in the dark, and those who would see the world burn before enduring one moment longer in “their place”—
Well, some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don’t lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place.
Life endures. It doesn’t need to do so enthusiastically.
only people who think they have a future fear death.
Except fathers will still try to murder their orogene children, won’t they? Even if the Moon comes back. Nothing will ever stop that.
“There have always been those who use despair and desperation as weapons.”
“One person’s normal is another person’s Shattering.”
“Would’ve been nice if we could’ve all had normal, of course, but not enough people wanted to share. So now we all burn.”
But there are none so frightened, or so strange in their fear, as conquerors. They conjure phantoms endlessly, terrified that their victims will someday do back what was done to them—even if, in truth, their victims couldn’t care less about such pettiness and have moved on. Conquerors live in dread of the day when they are shown to be, not superior, but simply lucky.
It’s up to us, then, to determine our own fate and future.
Not all fighters use knives, after all.
But sometimes it is the how of a thing, not just the endgame, that matters most.
Once, after all, I believed I was the finest tool ever created by a great civilization. Now, I have learned that I am a mistake cobbled together by paranoid thieves who were terrified of their own mediocrity.
But for her to be a person, she must stop being … ownable. By anyone.
“I think,” Hoa says slowly, “that if you love someone, you don’t get to choose how they love you back.”
I am also beginning to understand that people believe what they want to believe, not what is actually there to be seen and touched and sessed.
for a society built on exploitation, there is no greater threat than having no one left to oppress.
Syl Anagist must again find a way to fission its people into subgroupings and create reasons for conflict among them.
There’s not enough magic to be had just from plants and genegineered fauna; someone must suffer, if ...
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The Earth sees no difference between any of us. Orogene, still, Sylanagistine, Niess, future, past—to it, humanity is humanity. And even if others had commanded my birth and development; even if Geoarcanity has been a dream of Syl Anagist since long before even my conductors were born; even if I was just following orders; even if the six of us meant to fight back … the Earth did not care. We were all guilty. All complicit in the crime of attempting to enslave the world itself.
You, meanwhile, have reached up. To catch the Moon, and perhaps earn humanity a second chance.
“Orogeny,” I say, sharply so she will pay attention, “was never the only way to change the world.”
From here on, you may become whomever you wish. It’s just that you need to know where you’ve come from to know where you’re going.
Friends. Family. Moving with them. Moving forward.”
Don’t be patient. Don’t ever be. This is the way a new world begins.
it’s my nature to reflect in times of change, and to acknowledge both what was lost as well as what was gained.
Where there is pain in this book, it is real pain; where there is anger, it is real anger; where there is love, it is real love. You’ve been taking this journey with me, and you’re always going to get the best of what I’ve got.
