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October 12 - October 12, 2022
They were both familiar with the tamer, more workaday wood. There were woods behind their houses, dark and tangled and filled with wild mysteries, but still somehow smaller and more domesticated than forest. This, though, this was forest.
But the improbable road was nothing so pedestrian as a path, nor so timid as a thoroughfare. It was not available to every casual Sunday stroller, did not appear for those who simply wished to go berry-picking at the forest’s edge. It was a road with ideas and opinions of its own, and as such, could take time to coax out of hiding. It was also their only way to reach the Impossible City, where the Queen of Wands kept her court, and where other worlds could be easily accessed. Without the improbable road, they would have no adventure; they would simply have the long and painful process of
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People who believe they have a right to power will always find ways of making monsters from those they perceive as weaker than themselves.
The riverbeds are lined with the bones of children whose adventures ended too soon, done in by the words “a little less,” which are always uttered by those who see anyone unafraid of their own choices as too wild, too rambunctious, too much.
Fire lessened her ability to help, but inspiration made so many things possible.
But this was the improbable road, which existed primarily to do things that roads weren’t meant to do.
“What a queer notion, a well granting wishes! Might as well ask for grass to set the table, or clouds to control the weather. No, wishing wells are wells that have been wished for. They go where they’re most needed. Or where they’re brought.
The improbable road twinkled in the sunlight, silent and smug.
“Screaming isn’t going to help or change anything,” she said. “No matter how loud you get, the facts remain the same. I’ve never encountered noise-soluble facts, although I suppose they must exist.
The improbable road can always be found again by travelers in the Up-and-Under. It’s improbable that a road should be accessible no matter where someone is standing, and any improbability in the Up-and-Under feeds into the road’s design.
“You need to break your addiction to the idea that anything is impossible. Things don’t have to be possible to be true.”
This was a form of compassion on her part, and while it may have been somewhat misplaced, it was in no way misguided. The two things are not always the same, however much some people may make them out to be.
I’m just a Crow Girl, I don’t even have a name, and names change everything.”
If she’d been a little older, she might have started seizing on the adult ideas of equality, which is almost never equal at all, because it pretends that if everyone is given exactly the same amount of everything, the world will somehow twist inward on itself and turn fair.
Nothing living likes to be consumed.”
“Some people are never strangers, even if you haven’t met them before. Some people are always strangers, even if you live with them for a hundred years.
“There’s a difference between speaking truly and being cruel. You were cruel. You chose words you knew would hurt her, and you slung them like stones. Words have power. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t carry them the way we do. Sometimes a word is the only weapon you have. Go apologize.”
Everyone has another self inside them who comes out when they feel the time is right. For most people, that second self is summoned by fear or panic, which are similar and not the same. For others, that second self is brought out by the feeling of love or safety. The trick with second selves is not learning how to get rid of them—which can’t be done, no matter how hard a person tries—but finding a way to teach them to be kinder, one simple step at a time. Even second selves can be taught the way of walking through the world transmuting harm into healing; even second selves can grow.
Even intangible things must be balanced if the world is to remain anything resembling fair.
There is nothing wrong with pronouncing a word incorrectly when you have only heard it once before, but when that word is something as personal as someone’s name, it matters more that you try, that you listen hard for the place where each syllable bends and blurs into the next, and that if necessary, you ask for the proper pronunciation.
Sometimes people said mean things, but saying a mean thing didn’t always mean having a fight. Fights took both people deciding they were happening to really work, otherwise it was just one person being mean for no reason.
“Nothing has to change its nature to suit what someone else decides it’s going to be.”
Time has to be a straight line or it stops meaning anything. Cause and, um, effect.”
Stories only vanish when they are forgotten.”
As long as someone’s still people, you have to treat them with kindness.”
Not all hearts are broken without cause.
“Any gift you can take away that easily was never a gift at all,”
Even here in the Up-and-Under, where water could have opinions and people could be seasons, there was a cost for the things people might want to give you. Nothing came for free.
Fairy tales are lies wrapped around kernels of truth, meant to make the world comprehensible and clear. When they are questioned, it is almost always because the one asking the questions has found a crack in the lies and is homing in on something that, perhaps, they were not yet meant to understand.
it’s possible to sail beyond the reach of fire, but not of wind.
The knives of the wind are the sharpest of all. They flense skin from flesh and flesh from bone when they blow.
“The Queen of Wands is served by the Page of Gentle Embers, who is a kind soul, and hardly ever burns anything important into ash, and the King of Coins is served by the Page of Smelted Silver, who is much more concerned with the making of money than he is with the breaking of hearts. Only Swords and Cups are truly terrifying.”
“Magic is confusing,” said Avery. “Much of it is sympathetic; telling a thing that because it is similar to something else, they are the same. Usually, that improves the world. Sometimes, however, it casts barriers where none would otherwise have been.”
Each ruler crafts their own Court, claiming them from the resources of their land. A Consort, when desired, Lord or Lady; a Knight, to carry their will across the protectorates; and, at times, a Page, who serves as living weapon for their regnant. Many Consorts will refuse to share space with a Page, for so many of them are monsters.
The Pages are heartless, all of them, even the kindest, you see. They act according to their own ideals, and not to the ideals of the gentle or the merciful.
and to make an enemy of a Page is to make an enemy of the elements themselves, in their rawest, cruelest form.
