Her heart was bruised by the kiss, smashed and surprised and unsettled by it. September thought kisses were all nice, sweet things asked for gently and given gladly. It had happened so fast and sharp it had taken her breath. Perhaps she had done it wrong, somehow. She put the kiss away firmly to think about later. Instead, she smiled at him and pulled a carefree mask over her face.

Everyone is afraid of you and when folk are afraid of a person it usually means the person is cruel in some way, and I think you are cruel, Miss Marquess, but please don’t punish me for saying it. I think you know you’re cruel. I think you like being cruel. I think calling you cruel is the same as calling someone else kind. And I don’t want to run errands for someone cruel.

It is such hard work to keep your heart hidden! And worse, by the time you find it easy, it will be harder still to show it. It is a terrible magic in this world to ask for exactly the thing you want. Not least because to know exactly the thing you want and look it in the eye is a long, long labor.

Whenever one does extraordinary things, someone is bound to try to repeat them for themselves. It's the way of the world.

You look like a winter night", he had told her when he had given it to her. "I could sleep inside the cold of you".

But this is a story, and in a story there is always someone beautiful enough." - 'The Girl with Two Skins' from A Guide to Folktales in Fragile Dialects

... relationships required such vigilance, such attention. You had to hold them together by force of will, and other people took up so much space, demanded so much time. It was exhausting.