They live forever. But many of them are even more lonely and miserable than we are. Why do you think they bother with us? We teach them life's value.

I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore. I must try to remember.

I'm tired of being what everyone else has made me," I said. "I want to be myself." "Don't be a child." I looked up, startled and angry, though of course there was nothing to see. "What?" "You are what your creators and experiences have made you, like every other being in this universe. Accept that and be done; I'm tired of your whining.

We worship Him not because He is the best of our gods, but because He is, or was, the greatest killer among them.

The priest's lesson: beware the Nightlord, for his pleasure is a mortal's doom. My grandmother's lesson: beware love, especially with the wrong man.

And in that sliver of time, I felt the power around me coalesce, malice-hard and sharp as crystal. That this analogy occurred to me should have been a warning.

Calling something exotic emphasizes its distance from the reader. We don't refer to things as exotic if we think of them as ordinary. We call something exotic if it's so different that we see no way to emulate it or understand how it came to be. We call someone exotic if we aren't especially interested in viewing them as people - just as objects representing their culture.