This, she thought, isn’t just for today. It’s for everything. For the heartache that still felt like a punch in the gut each time it struck, fresh as new, at unpredictable moments; for the smiling lies and the mental images she couldn’t shake; for the shame of having been so naive. For the way loneliness is worse when you return to it after a reprieve—like the soul’s version of putting on a wet bathing suit, clammy and miserable.

Better to be the cat gazing coolly down from a high wall, its expression inscrutable. The cat that shunned petting, that needed no one. Why couldn't she be that cat?

To a new generation of butterflies, hopefully less stupid than last. Maybe they were burgeoning even now in fat little cocoons. Or maybe not.

Creamy and leggy, with long azure hair and the eyes of a silent-movie star, she moved like a poem and smiled like a sphinx.

Because hope comes from in you, and wishes are just magic.

Brimstone once told me that to stay true in the face of evil is a feat of strength.

She stabbed him in the armpit, deep, and he dropped his sword. And died. So that's what is feels like, she thought as her boldness gave away to trembling. It feels awful.