Aina's Breath Quotes

“...and yet here you are, Kefier, traipsing along the woods like some Agartes-be-damned fairy nymph...”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“I think it’s different, when you’re trying to fight for something. You’re trying to preserve a part of yourself so that you have enough left over for tomorrow. We’re all a little like that, no matter how far off the edge we’ve been.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“You don’t know if you’re allowed to, you said. But you are allowed, you’re allowed to be happy. What unseen deity stands over us, forcing us not to take what we can out of the mess we’ve been given?”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“Moon had this notion that life is not a random occurrence, or at least that even if it were, we owed it to ourselves to make something more from it. It is not just about waking up to go through the motions and then die. She talked about purpose, about changing the world beyond ourselves. How else do we give meaning to the mundane, and make sense out of needless suffering and the transience of this all?”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“Someone who had been a slave should have known better—you didn’t own people, you didn’t lay claim to their hearts. For that moment in time, she was with him, and he should’ve found a way to be happy with that. And perhaps he had been—perhaps he had simply forgotten. A moment of love, like a single coin, was too easily spent. You go through your whole life wanting more.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“He didn’t come for me out of love for myself. Why chain myself to a man who couldn’t do that, child or not?”
― K.S. Villoso, Aina's Breath

“But a woman could be two things at once. She could love her daughter and still want things that had nothing to do with her, that might even take her away from her. Birthing another person into the world didn’t mean you had to be constantly attached at the hip.”
― K.S. Villoso, Aina's Breath

“Woman her, old woman me—treat us with more respect and maybe someone will listen.”
― K.S. Villoso, Aina's Breath

“If the Empire of Dageis ever has to pay everyone who keeps it running a fair wage, it will fall flat on its face the first day.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“You still love me, right?” she demanded, the way only a daughter could.

“Child, when did I ever stop?” he choked out.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“Easy enough for supposed royalty to toss words about while the common man dies for your cause.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“If I die tonight, she will never know that I’ve been thinking of her.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“Pretend you’re mine tonight,” he murmured.

“I’ve never had to pretend,” she whispered. There were tears in her eyes. He wasn’t sure what it meant and wasn’t sure that he wanted to know. At the cusp of desperation and desire, he felt her lips brush against his cheek. “Do the same.”

“Pretend I’m yours?”

Her teeth grazed his neck. “Yes.”

“Heart and soul, Sume,” Kefier breathed, meaning every word.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“Harder than the loss comes the morning after.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“He watched her kiss their daughter’s cheeks, her forehead, her lips—watched her with the ache of a man who knew it was the last time he would ever see such things. And then his brave queen stood up, wiping the few tears in her eyes, and told him to take her away. “Don’t let the Dageians hurt her,” she said. She had never looked more beautiful in his life.”
― K.S. Villoso, Aina's Breath

“What you were taught—glamour and enchantment, we call it—could be easily chalked up to a charming personality.”

“What makes you think it isn’t my charming personality in the first place?”
― K.S. Villoso, Aina's Breath

“On second thought, you’d probably castrate me with a spoon.”
― K.S. Villoso, Aina's Breath

“So, indulge me, since we’ve already made the fatal error of being two women with nothing better to do than talk about that man.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“Does err, that dog shit gold, by any chance?”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“That sour note of sorrow is enough to twist the song.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“He was beginning to see that, harder than loss itself, was the act of getting up after the loss. Of trying to form your life around a present that seemed nothing like yesterday. To even start thinking about it felt like a betrayal.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“...the poison in my chest a reflection of my love.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“Why would I be happy to see the pathetic wretch? It looks like rats have birthed in his beard.”
― K.S. Villoso, Aina's Breath

“She stirred. “Go back to sleep, little love,” he murmured. “Everything will be all right.” He patted her leg and hummed her a song he had sung to her most nights since she was born. Her eyes began to droop closed again. He watched the curve of her nose and her long eyelashes, and thought about not being able to watch her grow up—of sunrises and sunsets, and how many other fathers would still have what he would lose by the end of this day. A lump welled up in his throat. He wanted to take her in his arms and run away.

Hyougen turned his head and saw Aliahe looking at him from the doorway. She knew what he was thinking—she always did. He felt helpless, and a moment passed where he thought he would just march down to that shore and beg the Dageians to spare his family, at least. He would do anything to hold on that moment in that room, basking in the warm breeze and orange glow of the sunlight, with the three of them alive and a touch away from each other—anything. A coward’s thought, and he killed it as soon as it passed, but it left his knees shaking all the same.”
― K.S. Villoso, Aina's Breath

“Like children learning to swim, we think we drown in sorrow,
only to awaken on the shore to tempt the tides again.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“I wish I could tell you this was the first time I woke up tied to a bed,” Enosh said.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“I am shocked,” Enosh said, “that you would dare suggest that someone out there wants to hurt me.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“You don’t find me handsome, Sapphire?”

“Because heavens forbid we talk about anything but you, your charisma, or your women when we’re passing time.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“Hearing stories about Goran alon gar Kaggawa over the past few years had given Sume the impression that he was a charming, likable man, always full of humour and energy. Perhaps she even recalled it, in a memory that overlapped her brother Oji’s, because they had been similar in many ways.

But mostly, she only remembered Goro the town drunk, the washed-up merchant, the man who couldn’t even be trusted to buy a sack of rice without wasting it on wine along the way. She remembered waking up in the middle of a night to the neighbour’s dog barking, which always meant that—for that night, at least—her father had managed to find his way back home. She would open the front door to find him vomiting in the garden or passed out by the steps. Because Hana would scold the old man if she woke her up to help, she always brought him in herself, heating up water to wash his face with.

Goro, if he woke up during these ministrations, would begin crying. He never told her the reason—he never spoke much in the years after her mother’s death—but even as a child, she could guess why. People find strength, or they break. There is enough room in a lifetime for both.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I know that I’m supposed to stand here and bear it all, that there are more important things to worry about. We hear stories about heroes of old and tell ourselves that we can be like that, too, brave and daring and impervious, only that’s not how it works, you see? Not all of us can be so selfless or so strong.”
― K.S. Villoso, Sapphire's Flight