Across the Green Grass Fields (Wayward Children, #6)

by Seanan McGuire

strange was something to be feared and avoided above all else in the vicious political landscape of the playground, where the slightest sign of aberration or strangeness was enough to bring about instant ostracization.

Such is the dichotomy of forests. Even the smallest remembers what it was to cover nations, and the shadows they contain will whisper that knowledge to anyone who listens.

both of them laughing with delight at the simple joy of being alive, and young, and together in a world that was better when not experienced in isolation. Anything with enough brain to know itself as an individual will reach out to others, looking for companionship, looking for other eyes with which to see the world.

She still didn’t believe in destiny. Clay shaped into a cup was not always destined to become a drinking vessel; it was simply shaped by someone too large to be resisted. She was not clay, but she had been shaped by her circumstances all the same, not directed by any destiny.

“I never met her, but Mother says she had antlers like cupped hands, full of wind and moonlight, and she was beautiful beyond bearing.”