Dare Quotes

“The evil world expected me to curl up in a corner like a seashell--silent and small and breakable--forgetting that a seashell held the roar of an entire ocean inside it. I didn't need a voice, only my teeth and my dreams to save me”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“In the daylight, you’re bold.
By the firelight, you’re brilliant.
Under the night light, you’re enduring.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“In the daylight, you’re bold.
By the firelight, you’re brilliant.
Under the night light, you’re enduring.
Always you're lasting”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“I'm obsessed with everything about you! How your hands are strong one moment and gentle the next. How they grip a weapon one moment, then brush the hair of your enemy in the same breadth. How the sunlight clings to your skin, your lips pinch when you're about to argue with me, your mouth lifts into a smile when you sleep. How you've endured hell for most of your life but look at this world as if it's made of a thousand colors others can't see. I'm obsessed with you when I shouldn't be--because of everything I've told you! I'm nothing but ice! And you're..."
I gave the fuck up, the confession ripping from my throat. "You're the fucking sun.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“They dunked their clothes into the grotto and scrubbed them against the rocks to leach out the grime, including his calf bandage. The fool wrestled with a stubborn stain that wouldn’t disappear from her shift. Frustrated, she puffed her lower lip. Of a normal girl, the picture would have been rather cute.
Well. What girl yearned to be called cute, a classification associated with pups. A word he had never uttered or assigned. Notwithstanding, “cute” ill-suited her. She was many things. Volatile. Hotheaded. Reckless. But not cute. Those golden irises and calamitous hands were not cute.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“Wiggling, she peeled the shift over her head, dropping it with a loud splat. Her bronze flesh glistened, beads riding across the mantles of her collarbones. Pert breasts. Prominent ribs. Starved arms and legs. Restless feet with bony ankles and high arches.
Jeryn stilled. He had seen this before, under her sodden rags.
What his clinical eyes had not seen before were her hands on those body parts.
She doused water over her hips and underarms. Unconcerned. Immodest. Bathing herself in front of him.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“Dangerous hands. Jeryn recalled them against her mouth, her fingers rubbing her lips. An indication that her blisters had been hurting her. The vision sidetracked him to the point where he neglected to intervene in her drinking, to insist that he test it first.
Sidetracked? How disgraceful of a physician. Having a cowardly amphibian escort him here had been insulting enough. Having the lips and hands of a fool girl distract Jeryn was unforgivable. He did not get distracted by anyone. By anything.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“The fool’s addled mind trusted nature to a fault. Having learned nothing from her encounter with the burning stream, she pranced around the grotto’s rim and dove into the air, plunging headfirst before he could stop her. She was going to get herself or both of them killed at this rate.
Shaking his head, Jeryn sat and watched her forget that he existed. Her figure flew back up, her hair spraying the vicinity with twinkling particles. She spritzed fluid, and her mouth parted in what he surmised to be a mute laugh. She tumbled over and under with the agility of a Spring acrobat. A dramatic swimmer.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“She called it a grotto. He’d read and heard of such places. Though other than being located inside this cave, he presumed this one would flout expectations, as the rest of the island had.
The water glinted a prismatic dioptase green, perhaps from deposits beneath the surface. Ripples trembled like veins, their reflections illuminating the enclosure. Jeryn slid his palm over the rocks, serrated and inlaid with mineral specks, adding to the area’s visibility.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“If he didn’t know better, he would speculate that he’d walked into a mirage, except that mirages receded upon one’s approach. They did not manifest themselves into tangible atmospheres. He lacked nourishment and energy, and therefore lacked sense. That was the problem. That was why he came here after waking with eminent symptoms: a stomach recently depleted of seawater (he’d expelled the contents upon consciousness), a physical constitution that left him sodden on the outside and dry on the inside, and a ghastly scratch down to his larynx.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“Perhaps the mad girl had drowned. Perhaps the ocean had spared him the trouble of having to deal with her.
Jeryn eased himself through the wall of foliage at the forest’s border, knocking vines out of the way with his shoulder. He’d had his reservations about its penetrability, appearing unbreachable from the outside. However, the instant he passed through the trees, the area expanded, effortless to move around in. Surprising.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“They marked me with paint. It was a molten paint, and they dabbed it into my skin with a brush, its bristles made to endure the heat.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“Her hands gripped the runner, which had stretched to its limit, though it kept her from going fully under. Her brows squashed together in frustration.”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare

“Bubbles spilled from her lips as she mouthed something. A scolding or a demand. Perhaps something like, Hurry up!”
― Natalia Jaster, Dare