In Other Lands

by Sarah Rees Brennan

“I don’t need you to explain to me the concept of a magical land filled with fantastic creatures that only certain special children can enter. I am acquainted with the last several centuries of popular culture. There are books. And cartoons, for the illiterate.”

Take that, every jerk at school who had ever laughed at Elliot’s name. No badass elven maidens had ever told them that their names were not unpleasing, had they? “Are you

He would’ve thought about being a teacher when he grew up, but Elliot knew himself, and he knew that the impressionable and tenderhearted should be protected from him.

He can barely summon up the will to live.

“Also, Serene and I have not defined the parameters of our relationship yet, though I have high hopes.”

“What, you people expect women to tear apart their bodies and then go to all the bother of raising the children? That takes years, you know,” Serene remarked sternly. “The women’s labour is brief and agonizing, and the man’s is long and arduous. This seems only just. What on earth are men contributing to their children’s lives in the human world? Why would any human woman agree to have a child?”

But shouldn’t the adults, if they loved them, if they were responsible for them and cared for them more than for anything else, the way adults were supposed to . . . shouldn’t they try to stop them saving the day, even if they could do it?

“Oh, men are cowards,” said Serene. “So afraid of a woman in charge that they would commit treason. They must worry that she will show the world a woman is a far more able commander than any man.”

Honey, welcome to the workplace

Elliot wondered why people liked bad illusions so much more than reality.

“Maybe both our societies are messed up, and they each only think one type of person is really a person. And the type of person they think is really a person is allowed to show imperfections and age . . . whereas the type of person they think is an object should show no signs of being a person. We’re socialized to see the imperfections in those objects.”

it was absolute blissful relief just to have people who would look at him when they spoke to him, who would listen when he replied.

he was looking for something that wouldn’t push him out of his comfort zone. Jase didn’t want to be challenged.

“Uh, you, the murderous, man-hating elf girl, and the intense gay kid?” asked the medic. “You’re the weirdo table.”

“You know—women shed their dark feelings with their menses every month? But men, robbed of that outlet, have strange moodswings and become hysterical at a certain phase of the moon?”

That was love: Elliot couldn’t command it, couldn’t demand it. He could only leave the chill echoing place where it was not.

“Excuse me,” Elliot said. “I see an emotional situation going wildly awry.” “Yeah,” said Delia. “That’s life.”

Luke kept yammering at him to wake up right now, but there didn’t seem to be a battle or a literary dispute or anything too urgent going on, so Elliot continued snoozing.

The more Luke mattered to him, the more Elliot expected to be hurt.

quarrel

What a fabulous word

Elliot agreed to be in a committed relationship. It was very possible that Elliot should be committed.

Just the truth, Elliot reminded himself. Not what he thought someone else wanted to hear, or what he thought would protect himself. Just the truth, and trusting that someone else would care to hear it.