Howling Dark (The Sun Eater #2)

by Christopher Ruocchio

The poets say that one’s fears grow less with trial, that we become men without fear if tried enough. I have not found it to be so. Rather, on each occasion we are tested, we become stronger than our fears. It is all we can do. Must do. Lest we perish for our failings.

Regret is stronger than fury, and is comparably immortal.

Hardly did I recognize the young man peering out at me. When did I get so tired? Time had not yet traced her delicate channels on my face, nor frosted my hair, but something lurked behind my eyes: something aged and thin as old parchment.

The rightly tuned mind does not deny its emotions, but floats with them. It accepts what it feels and so incorporates that feeling to itself. Thus the mind is not subject, but rules itself.

So love is not merely an emotion, but a vow made one to another. A vow renewed in each moment, until it hardly needs making at all.

That is why we pray, why we build great temples and write great books: to ask great questions and to live—not by the answers, for such questions are unanswerable—but by the noble process of seeking those answers, that we might stand tall and struggle on.

I said once that it is the purpose of the artist to see not what is or might be, but to see what must be. All creation is such.

We are not always the authors of our own stories. Some of us never are. I think that is what we struggle for: the command of our own lives. We struggle against our families, against the state, against nature, against our own weakness. All that we might choose for ourselves, if only for a moment. If only once.