Nettle & Bone

by T. Kingfisher

“Eventually, everyone winds up in the same place. You do the work because it needs to be done, and it is satisfying to have it done for a little while.”

Then again, peasants and princesses all shit the same and have their courses the same, so I suppose it’s no surprise that babies all come out the same way, too.

‘One child, one tooth,’ as the peasant women say, and half these poor women have no teeth left to spare.

the history of the world was written in women’s wombs and women’s blood and she would never be allowed to change it.

She was used to being stubborn, but having people agree with her was off-putting and didn’t give her much to work with.

I am doing a heroic task and heroic tasks are not done by half measures. It’s only pain.

“How did you get a demon in your chicken?” “The usual way. Couldn’t put it in the rooster. That’s how you get basilisks.”

Nothing is fair, except that we try to make it so. That’s the point of humans, maybe, to fix things the gods haven’t managed.

“Injustice and the desire for revenge age the body, but they keep the soul going halfway to forever,”