1
Battle is gruesome, but it is vigorous, alive. The aftermath is the worst of it: adrenaline fades, quiet sweeps in, and there’s nothing to distract you from the mess of bodies and disturbed earth.Darrell Drake
2
Ashtadukht slumped and let thenightingale’s song flood her brain. She knew that empty tone, that defeatedoutlook; she knew it intimately. Even now, it burned in her as limply as asnuffed flame. Passion burned with unchecked verve, devoured its fuel, andsputtered out. Despair required no upkeep; it heaped barely-glowing coals inthe back of your mind and fuelled itself.Darrell Drake
3
You aren’t falling apart. You’re well beyond that. You’re just rattling along now. Elven dolls doing what little you can to gather the pieces as they fall away. But you don’t know how to properly reattach them–a doll does not repair itself. So you hug those brittle fragments to your chest until you simply cannot hug anymore. Until you’ve had to leave so many behind that you no longer remember what it is you’re missing. .Darrell Drake
4
If the years have taught me one thing it's that those who care are always scarce. Those who genuinely care; not the acquaintances, false friends or those with similar aspirations. The few who seek your company, the souls who would plainly step off the world for you. Once you resolve to ignore them, only regret will follow.Darrell Drake
5
She did not belong to the healthy group of widows and widowers who, after mourning, would nurture the seed of their grief into growing from loss–perhaps continuing the dreams of the lost, or learning to cherish alone the things they’d cherished together. She belonged instead to the sad lot who clung to grief, who nurtured it by never moving beyond it. They’d shelter it deep inside where the years padded it in saudade layers like some malignant pearl.Darrell Drake
6
There is a duality to darkness known only to those who’ve been infected by its touch. Everyone knows the shadows: shallow, comfortable, mostly harmless places where one might nest for a night. But the depths of living pitch only visit the aristocracy of madmen and women who’ve unwittingly pledged fealty to the curse. For some, it outright ruins minds like a hound to fresh meat; for others, it wanes into the deepest parts of its less caustic sibling and waits for the time to strike, returning periodically through life like an incurable disease. .Darrell Drake
7
Unnatural, unorthodox, amoral: those pretensions crumble when confronted by true happiness. You shouldn't give another the authority to draw a line defining the boundaries of acceptable joy.Darrell Drake
8
She murdered for her truth, and they had died for theirs.Darrell Drake
9
Deception was an inherent trait of intelligent beings. Even his love, in her ample ardor, would weave him a guilty lie for his own good. And he treasured her just as well for those tales he was sure she'd already spun.Darrell Drake
10
I was pregnable once, ” Merill thought to contribute. She remembered how troublesome it made getting around, having a ripe belly. Couldn’t roll properly, couldn’t hop properly, couldn’t romp or flop properly. There were the cravings for roasted cabbage–she loathed cabbage, with its leaves and growing in rows. And labor! Merill passed out during childbirth. She’d endured burns, lacerations, rips, serrated teeth, nails, hooks and a trove of unmentionable harm-inflictors. Labor trounced them all and wriggled gleefully in the spray of blood and gore. “Being pregnable is no good. No good at all. Like growing a bitter melon in your belly. .Darrell Drake
11
ââ„¢« Climbed that roost, alighted right there. Made mush of his head for the onlooker bears. A two-pronger her prize, a meat most rare. Do-gooders will pay. Do-gooders will fear. ââ„¢«Darrell Drake
12
She set out for revenge, to run them through, to do what an elf, an elf must do.” The next verse was Merill’s to improvise. “Climbed that roost, alighted right there. Made mush of his head for the onlooker bears.” “A two-pronger her prize, a meat most rare. Do-gooders will pay. Do-gooders will fear.” “Ballad of the loneliest ones, ” lamented Merill. “The loneliest ones, ” said Almi. She accepted that title; they were the loneliest. The elf gloomed.Darrell Drake
13
She could have rambled with all the fervor of a woman who had loved one entity for longer than most races live, and with the inviolable, unquestioned certainty found in dementia. There were references dated and sealed with meticulous care which she would have enthusiastically opened with the mirth of one proclaiming a lifetime of honors and awards. But that singular event was freshly disturbed; its pores still drifted on the faint zephyr of remembrance.Darrell Drake