Amie Kaufman

“Do moons choose the planets they orbit? Do planets choose their stars? Who am I to deny gravity, Aurora? When you shine brighter than any constellation in the sky?”

And I know it’s hard to move on. But we can’t hold ourselves in place forever, darling, not for anyone. Life is for living. The ones you left behind will be all right, I promise. The ones you leave behind in the future will be all right too, even if you make it all the way to another planet.

‘There is nothing as painful, or as simple, as doing what is right.’

Love is purpose, be’shmai.
Love is what drives us to great deeds, and greater sacrifices.

Love is purpose, be’shmai.
Love is what drives us to great deeds, and greater sacrifices.
Without love, what is left?

Without love, what is left?

The bindle cat gives his own blessings in echo of mine—though they sound more like curses—as he trots along beside me, tail upright and round eyes alert. While everyone in my life knows I ought to have manifested my aspect years ago, and has hopes and expectations for me, he has none beyond his next snack. The bindle cat is just a cat.

If we don’t dream—if we don’t try to go Below, try to push out the borders of our tiny archipelago and see what else is out there—then what’s the point of all our tech? Are we supposed to just use it to make sleeker transports and smarter chronos—to make our lives lazier and easier?

Not me. I want to explore. There’s a way to solve any problem, and if we want to figure out how to survive Below so we can search it for answers, then we need to go there.

“They’ve trained for it all their lives. You can be kind to them, you can show them respect and even affection, but you cannot take from them the acts that give them purpose.”

And the best fighter in the world would still never be chosen as defender of the divine if she could not respect the formality and ritual of the role.