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All the while, Philip explained that the fiercer the creature, the more gentle must be the man, or they would never be in accord. This was why his father wanted him to learn this art, so that he would know what it was to be a servant to one who served you, to have dominance but never complete control.
Don’t see them, don’t think of them, just go on with life and one day he would find he had forgotten most of it, and struggle to remember the details. There was an art to letting go of memories. He had learned it well.
Hiraeth means to long for a place that is lost to you, or impossible to reach. To know a great part of your soul dwells in a place you cannot be – that is hiraeth.”
She was sharp-witted and beautiful and deadly and kind, and there was no other creature like her.
I know hiraeth is what fills the distance between where you stand and where lives your heart.”
many times she had thought Bea might have been forced to prostitute herself. In some ways, it was the best she could have hoped for, the least evil of many fates that could befall a girl of her station. Not starving or dead, just a common whore.
It angered her suddenly, irrationally, that he dared to be surprised or appalled at this. What a luxury, to be able to believe in the honor of men.
“I honor those who are deserving of my honor, be they high or low.
“But there is a greater truth behind it: that the words of a serving girl are seldom noted. And so she did find a way through silence to her voice. It was only when she stopped speaking that she was ever heard.”
“Again and again, I am saved by good women. I will not forget their names, and I ask God and his saints to remember them.”
Of course she would not give him words. Not curses, or platitudes, or even farewell. Of course not. He did not deserve them, arrogant fool that he was. He would lose her, and it would be silent, because nothing could be more devastating.
It had been his home, his children’s home, his father’s home – and he must leave it, knowing he would likely never see it again. This was hiraeth being born.
He had been starving with a well-fed falcon on his wrist, because the great were not ruled – could not be ruled – by their own selfish desires.
“Well do I know it is what I deserve for leaving you, that no place on this earth can be home to me, without you are in it.”
It angered him beyond reason, that she believed she was so small.
she was as swift and fearless in her love as in everything.
She would not be daunted. She loved him. They would make a way together.
