Cassandre

"The King of Elfland's Daughter", by Lord Dunsany.

"Now it is thus with time in Elfland: in the eternal beauty that dreams in that honied air nothing stirs of fades or dies, nothing seeks its happiness in movement or change or a new thing, but has its ecstasy in the perpetual contemplation of all the beauty that has ever been, and which always glows over those enchanted lawns as intense as when first created by incantation or song.", from The King of Elfland's Daughter, by Lord Dunsany.

"La Brume l'emportera", by Stéphane Arnier.

"Vous ne pouvez pas revenir en arrière et changer le début. Mais vous pouvez commencer là où vous êtes et changer la fin.", by C.S. Lewis.

"Une Valse pour les Grotesques", by Guillaume Chamanadjian.

"N'es-tu pas une preuve vivante que c'est le cas ? Et moi..." Renata croisa les bras, comme pour s'enlacer elle-même : "Moi aussi j'en suis désormais une preuve. Peut-être pas aussi vivante que toi, j'en conviens. Ce point se doit d'être discuté par des docteurs en philosophie, à tout le moins.", from Une Valse pour les Grotesques, de Guillaume Chamanadjian.

"The Handmaid's Tale", by Margaret Atwood.

"I want to be held and told my name. I want to be valued, in ways that I am not; I want to be more than valuable. I repeat my former name; remind myself of what I once could do, how others saw me. I want to steal something.", from The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

"I take it from her, turn it around so I can see I right-side-up. Is this her, is this what she's like? My treasure. So tall and changed. Smiling a little now, so soon, and in her white dress as if for an olden-days First Communion. Time has not stood still. It has washed over me, whashed me away, as if I'm nothing more than a woman of sand, left by a careless child too near the water. I have been obliterated for her. I am only a shadow now, far back behind the glib shiny surface of this photograph. A shadow of a shadow, as dead mothers become. You can see it in her eyes: I am not there.", from The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood.

"Juniper & Thorn", by Ava Reid.

"Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking, "What year is it?" I can dance in my sleep and laugh in front of the mirror.", from Author's Prayer, by Ilya Kaminsky.

"But even we were warned never to touch the juniper tree, which bore berries of the most dangerous variety: both poisonous and sweet. Whatever sick thing was in them, we could not be inured to it.", from Juniper & Thorn, by Ava Reid.

"Lud-in-the-Mist", by Hope Mirrlees.

"From this there sprang an ever-present sense of insecurity together with a distrust of the homely things he cherished. With which familiar object - quill, pipe, pack of cards - would he be occupied, in which regularly recurrent action - the pulling on or off of his nightcap, the weekly auditing of his accounts - would he be engaged when IT, the hidden menace, sprang out at him ? And he would gaze in terror at his furniture, his walls, his pictures - what strange scene might they one day witness, what awful experience might he one day have in their presence?", from Lud-in-the-Mist, by Hope Mirrlees.

"A Closed and Common Orbit", by Becky Chambers.

"Jane 64 wasn't saying anything, just breathing real hard and heavy. Scared, probably, but she wasn't talking about going back to bed any more, either. Hane 23 understood. She felt the same way. Jane 23 stuck her hand out beyond the edge of the broken wall. It was real cold, for sure, but not cold like metal was cold or the floor in the bathroom was cold. It was just cold, everywhere. Her skin got tight and made little bumps. It wasn't a very good feeling, but she liked it anyway, just as she liked it whenever she got to taste soap or blood or anything that wasn't a meal. It was different. The cold felt different.", from A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers.

"A Study in Drowning", by Ava Reid.

"'Have you heard the expression about the frog in hot water? If you raise the temperature slowly, he won't notice a thing until he's boiled alive. A soft-bellied Northerner might have seen the danger coming, but the Southerners practically had scales and fins themselves. The sea took and took and took, thousands of little deaths, and they endured it all because they knew nothing else. They didn't think to fear the Drowning until the water was lapping at their door'", from A Study in Drowning, by Ava Reid.

"Les Fourneaux de Crachemort", by Raphaël Bardas.

"-Dans ses yeux, ma belle, il y avait des doigts, des doigts tout petits, comme ceux d'un enfant. Dans sa bouche, il y avait un sac… un sac d'infini… J'y ai vu le visage d'un gosse qui fouissait vers la surface. C'est ça, oui, c'est ça. Dans sa gueule de ces guerriers siluriens, il y a des enfants qui cherchent à s'enfuir.", from Les Fourneaux de Crachemort, by Raphaël Bardas.

''Flowers for Algernon'', by Daniel Keyes.

''As we entered the cafeteria on Forty-fifth Street and picked up our trays, she spoke animatedly. 'Ordinary people,' she said, 'can see only a little bit. They can't change much or go any higher than they are, but you're a genius. You'll keep going up and up, and see more and more. And each step will reveal worlds you never knew existed.'

People on the line who heard her turned to stare at me, and only when I nudged her to stop did she lower her voice. 'I just hope to God,' she whispered, 'that you don't get hurt.' '', from Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes.

''The Last Unicorn'', by Peter S. Beagle.

''This is illusion, the unicorn told herself. This is illusion - and somehow raised a head heavy with death to stare deep into the dark of the last cage and see, not Old Age, but Mommy Fortuna herself, stretching and snickering and clambering to the ground with her old eerie ease. And the unicorn knew then that she had not become mortal and ugly at all, but she did not reel beautiful again. Perhaps that was illusion too, she thought wearily.'', from The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle.

"Eden", by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir.

"I was standing on my patch of grass, holding the tail of a mouse I'd caught in the house and looking for a hole to put it in, when a sentence I'd recently read in an article suddenly came to mind: language is the main tool of human beings in their struggle for power. It made me realise that although my job is to analyse how ideas and feelings fit into the mould of language, I haven't always been very good at matching my thoughts to my words. It's both strange and illogical that a mouse should be the source of such thoughts, and it's even stranger that, just afterwards, I decided to build a stone wall.", from Eden, by Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir.

"While I'm drinking my coffee, he asks me if I still sometimes dream that I'm flying. I tell him that yes, I see myself flying over the Earth and observing it. Sometimes I even leave the atmosphere. I thought for a moment before adding that on the night Hlynur died, I dreamt I was floating above my property and that beside the stone wall was an orchard of fruit trees in blossom.

"The Morning Star", by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

"The flat black surface of the fjord shimmered. And then, once again, it began to burn. In the mountains. I stopped. No, it wasn't a fire. Something was appearing in the sky. A star. A mega star. Did it really exist? Or was it a figment of my imagination too? As it rose, the light spread across the sky and sparkled on the water. A couple arriving opposite me had also seen it and were staring up at the star, mouths agape in their embrace. Below me, cars had stopped on the big bridge, their doors opened and people were getting out. I'd never seen anything so beautiful. A mega star. And it really existed.", from The Morning Star, by Karl Ove Knausgaard.

"Wake up, you sleepy head, Put on some clothes, shake up your bed Put another log on the fire for me I've made some breakfast and coffee Look out my window, what do I see A crack in the sky and a hand reaching down to me

"Klara and the Sun", by Kazuo Ishiguro.

"Picture Josie and Picture Rick appeared to be floating in the sky, the trees, roads and houses far below reduced to miniature sizes. Behind them, in one section of sky, were seven birds flying in formation. Picture Josie was holding up with two hands a much larger bird, offering it as a special gift to Picture Rick. Picture Josie had a large smile, and Picture Rick a look of thrilled amazement. There was no bubble for Picture Rick. The only one was for Picture Josie's thoughts, and inside it Rick had written : 'I wish I could go out and walk and run and skateboard and swim in lakes. But I can't because my mother has Courage. So instead I get to stay in bed and be sick. I'm glad about this. I really am.'", from Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro.

"The Ten Thousand Doors of January", by Alix E. Harrow.

"At this point, you're thinking that this story isn't really about Doors, but about the more private, and altogether more miraculous, doors that can open between two hearts. Maybe it is, in the end - I happen to believe every sotry is a love story if you catch it at the right moment, slantwise in the light of dusk - but that wasn't the case then.", from The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow.

"Dans l'Ombre de Paris", first song of "La Dernière Geste", by Morgan of Glencoe.

"Yuri baissa les yeux. Son hôtesse avait raison raison. Assister son époux lorsqu'il le requiert, organiser les réceptions royales et donner un héritier au Royaume de France. Ils vécurent heureux et eurent beaucoup d'enfants. Fin de l'histoire. Fin de la vie. Fin des rêves. À vingt ans. Comme un trai qui s'arrêtait parvenu au bout des rails, sans possibilité de dévier de sa route ni même de la poursuivre un peu plus loin. L'image de la Capitaine Trente-Chênes s'imposa à l'esprit de la jeune femme. "Cette femme n'a pas de chaperon", avait dit Ryûzaki. Pas de chaperon. Pas de père, pas de fiancé, pas d'époux, pas de fils. Pas d'obligations envers un homme qui lui serait supérieur. Et tout un équipage à ses ordres. Qu'importait qu'elle obtînt l'obéissance par le respect ou par la crainte? Un souvenir lointain lui revint en mémoire. un oeil bleu entre des cheveux noirs. La petite Selkie de Gôshi Mayo, enfermée dans sa cage, l'avait dévisagée avec compassion. Comme si la fée avait perçu l'invisible prison dans laquelle on l'élevait, elle, Nekohaima Yuri-hime, troisième femme du Japon, et compris sa solitude.", from Dans l'Ombre de Paris.

"Once There Were Wolves", by Charlotte McConaghy.

"Aggie raises one hand to follow the contours of her face, feeling with one finger her cheeks, my cheeks, her forehead, my forehead, her lips, my lips. 'I couldn't let you go,' I say again, feeling viscerally the touch of her finger on my skin, and yet, isn't this a trick of my mind - to give reality to what has none? 'Are you a ghost?' Aggie squeezes my hand so hard it hurts, so hard my bones threaten to break. She's trying to hurt me, that's for sure. Then she makes a sign. One of the first she's made up. I don't know what it is.", from Once There Were Wolves.