Anastasia

by Sophie Lark

“I’m glad you know that poetry ought to be heard, not read.”

Hypocrisy isn’t complete until it’s also inconsistent.

That’s the balance of life, hard as it is to accept. A heart open to joy is a heart vulnerable to sorrow. There’s no family without loss, no love without pain.”

“Whatever else is taken from you, never lose hope. Even if you see how dark the world can be, choose to believe it could be better.”

“There’s never just one reason for anything. What I’m trying to illustrate, Anastasia, is that a lust for power will poison your mind. It strengthens you … but bends your sense of what should be traded. Be careful what you allow to shape you. Ruling is a responsibility, and a heavy one. It’s what we owe to the people, not what they owe to us.”

There was a time when I also wished to be great. I dreamed of making art that all the world would know. But I lived a very different life than what I planned. We can’t know where our talents will take us—the gods decide, not us. Cherish what you have, not what you wish for.”

rusalka, the painfully beautiful redheads that lurked around waterways, hoping to drag sailors down to their deadly grottos.

The sirin looked like a bird, but when people heard her call, they lost their minds and chased her voice until they fell into canyons or drowned in lakes.

In Serbia, a creature called the psoglav had the hind legs of a horse and the head of a dog, with one single eye in the middle of its face and teeth made of iron. It lived in caves and dug up human graves to feast on fresh corpses.

the gamayun, birds with female breasts and faces. I paged through a dozen illustrations of disturbingly seductive bird-women who seemed to be painted by artists who wouldn’t mind meeting one, even if it might rip out their throats.

He was our dark angel, though he hovered over Alexei like a demon.

I had an ash stake in my pocket. I’d put it there as insurance, if the absolute worst were true. Now the worst stood in front of me, calm and composed, looking like the man I’d always known.

I couldn’t use his face to check the truth of his words. It would only deceive me further.

“I’m not a monster. I’m a man who was touched by the monstrous.”

Time was a river, ever-changing, eroding even its own banks.

the scent of her perfume fading like flowers forgotten between the pages of a book.

The strange thing about fear is that it has no stamina. You can’t live in a constant state of vigilance and paranoia. Without tangible reminders of the danger hanging over your head, life intrudes with all its daily demands, its pleasures, its interests.

I’d never seen him happier than when he stood beneath an arch of pine boughs in the winter snow, saying his vows to his beloved under the cathedral of the forest sky.

Her breath went into my lungs and our souls overlaid like two transparent images.

We’d laughed and danced until I was thrumming with energy, until I felt like I was made of pure, electric light.

Suffering changes you. Either you become cold and bitter, divorced from human feeling. Or the opposite occurs, and you can’t bear to inflict the pain you’ve felt on anyone else.

Everything on this earth was fragile and impermanent, even the earth itself if we really were just a speck of rock whirling through the infinite heavens.

Rasputin was my dark mirror. He showed me what I’d become if I followed the worst impulses that lived inside us both.

I dreamed with a fury stronger than the reality I saw around me.

“The ones we love aren’t lost to us forever. Love endures past anything else. It’s the strongest energy in the universe. It changes and flows, but can never be destroyed.”

just an edge on the pleasure like salt sprinkled over sweet summer melon.

Love is always magic. It’s not rational, it doesn’t follow any law. You can’t make rules for it, you can’t forbid it. You can’t even make it disappear within yourself. It’s alive like all magic, and it wants to change you.

like I was the earth and he was the moon, strong enough to influence the tides.

“It’s raw, it’s carnal, that’s why it’s fun, that’s why we love it. It’s why we dance around a campfire, not in a palace. There’s plains all around you, forest, and wolves, the moon over your head. Stop watching everyone else. Be alive! It’s instinct, it’s

I don’t know why we can love things on other people but not ourselves.

A thread doesn’t see the weaving, it doesn’t know its own color and pattern. But it takes its place all the same.

Some moments burn in your mind and create a light you can look at forever. Memories that never fade, but only get brighter each time you visit them, like the place on a brass statue a thousand hands have touched.

If the dead feel anything, it’s the joy of the living. We must glow like lanterns to them, through the screen that separates us all.

I wasn’t afraid of my worst memories. You don’t forget what changes you—you shouldn’t.

Fulfillment is equal to the difficulty of the job. Those who never face something that could break them will never know the satisfaction of finding yourself whole and triumphant on the other side.

All we have are the days given to us. I was lucky enough to get a few more.

Ultimately this story became a fantasy of what our world could be like if we had leaders who loved the people more than themselves.