Move across the country and hope the Sadness won't find you, won't follow you like a stray dog from coast to coast. Hope the Sadness isn't just a fog on a leash, shadowing you always. Hope the Sadness can't be as fleet as you are, hope the Sadness is more rooted. Perhaps the Sadness has friends, a family, and can't just pick up and go. Look at all this stuff the Sadness has here in San Jose or Chapel Hill or wherever you're currently leaving. How's the Sadness going to survive without all this stuff? Hope this isn't one of those any-place-I-hang-my-hat-is- home-type situations where the Sadness hangs its hat on you. Hope that you are not the Sadness's home, anywhere you go, no matter how far, no matter how quickly– the Sadness lives in you. Hope to God it's not that.
New Faces and Lullubies
“I’m Darius.” He waves. “Nice to meet you. I’ll get out in just a
moment. I just came for a quick reading.”
“Darius is addicted to Tana’s readings,” Serana explains. “You know
drug addicts? He’s like that, but for cartomancy. He’s here every night,
asking about love. Tana, where is my soulmate? Tana, is the fella I met
today the one? Tana, does this devil on the card mean I stop following my
old lovers through the streets of Camelot, or am I destined for a gorgeous
bad boy?”
“I also ask about weightier subjects, not just my love life,” Darius
snaps.
“I don’t mind either way.” Tana is shuffling her cards. “But before we
do your reading, I promised one for Nia.”
Darius scoots to the corner of the bed and gestures at me. “Ladies first.”
“It’s not necessary,” I say warily.
“Oh, let her get on with it,” Serana says. “Or she won’t stop harping
about it.”
I sit down between Darius and Tana, and she hands me the deck of
cards. “Shuffle and think of the future.”
I shuffle the cards, but thinking of the future seems impossible. I used to
have everything planned years in advance. But now? I have no idea what’s
happening.
I finally hand the cards back to Tana, and she flips the first one. I peer
down to see what it is, and a chill sweeps over my skin. I don’t know a ton
about tarot, but this one is obviously ominous. It looks like a tower struck
by lightning, with silhouettes of bodies falling from it. Flames rise from
some of the windows, and dark storm clouds surround it.
“The Tower,” she says.
“Like…Avalon Tower?” I ask.
“Perhaps. The cards shouldn’t be taken too literally.”
She frowns and flips another card, which she places across it. This one
Reklam
And let me wring your heart, for so I shall,
If it be made of penetrable stuff;
If damned custom have not braz'd it so,
That it is proof and bulwark against sense.
"people's desire to show off fancy stuff is because it's their last remaining or even only way to gain respect and admiration. If you struggle to gain respect and admiration through your intelligence, hanor, empathy, or capacity for love, you might default to the only remaining - and least effective - lever your stuff. Look at my car, beep beep, vroom vroom."
I have been with you, in every way that matters. As you have been with me. We've shared our thoughts and our food, bound each other's wounds, slept close when the warmth of our bodies was all we left share. Your tears have fallen on my face, and my blood has been on your hands. You've carried when I was dead, and I carried you when I did not even recognize you. You've breathed my breath for me, sheltered me inside your own body. So, yes, Fitz, in every way that matters, I've been with you. We've shared the stuff of our beings. Just as a captain does with her liveship. Just as a dragon does with his Elderling. We've been together so many ways that we have mingled.
If there was a secret formula for becoming known, I would give it to you. But there’s only one not-so-secret formula that I know: Do good work and share it with people.
It’s a two-step process. Step one, “do good work,” is incredibly hard. There are no shortcuts. Make stuff every day. Know you’re going to suck for a while. Fail. Get better. Step two,“ share it with people,” was really hard up until about ten years ago or so. Now, it’s very simple: “Put your stuff on the Internet.”
Sayfa 68
Reklam
Reklam