Ashes of Man (The Sun Eater, #5)

by Christopher Ruocchio

The ugliness of the world does not fade, nor are fear and grief made less by time, nor is any suffering forgotten. We are only made stronger by its blows.

So often we don’t see the truth because we won’t look low enough.

The Greeks spoke of catharsis, of the purging of emotion by tragedy. I have always imagined it a kind of breaking, of shattering—not into a thousand shards—but back into one.

But one cannot step into the same river twice, nor onto the same world. All things are always in motion. That is why it is the highest good and cause of civilization to preserve—to conserve—what is good. It is for that reason we plant new seeds, that if we might not preserve the trees, we might preserve the forest.

She had suffered—not as I had suffered—but in her own way, and suffering is not quantified or measured. It only is.

We have need of heroes, however broken, however terrible, however insufficient they may be. And we have need of more than one hero, for heroes do break, you know.

“One of these days you will have to accept that people love you, Hadrian.

“Maybe you’re right. But there are women and women, commander. Some ask nothing of us, and so we are nothing to them. But there are those women who ask all of us. Those are the ones worth giving all for.”

If god exists—yours or any other—then surely, though he seems supernatural to us, his nature is to himself as natural as breathing. If that is so, then there are no miracles. There is only . . . what is.”

I said once that women sit in judgment over men, our judges, jurists—our executioners, if they judge us wanting; our patrons if they do not.

I could not shake the thought that men were not meant to witness armageddon and live.

I bowed and—sensing it was best not to speak—for perhaps the first time in my life, said nothing.

I said once that a man is the sum of memories, and it is so. Thus, to discard those memories—however terrible—is to discard a part of ourselves.

“If I were better,” he said, “stronger. Normal. I could have stayed. I could have done something. Why did you pick me?”

Do we not all think this way sometimes—whatever our condition—and in a sense is it not true? Evil occurs because we are insufficient to challenge it. Too weak to stop it at the gates, too blind to see it bubbling within. Were we all angels in our virtue and heroes in our capacity, we might hold all chaos at bay, might stop even the unkindling of the stars. Yet we are but men. Even me.

It is hard to live. Easier perhaps to die. Easier at least to be dead, though the gate is harder won when one raises the portcullis himself than those who have not tried it believe. And yet I found I did not wish for death, though neither did I wish for life. I would fight—when the time came—as an animal fights, wild and without plan.

“There is much light you cannot see.”