Maybe the bridge between life and death isn't a bridge at all, he'd said once to her. Maybe it's more like an ocean. You're under water, reaching for the surface, and I'm on the shore, dipping my hand into the sea.

"I was here for a moment, and then I was gone"

I wish to know the unknowable. To see what no mortal has seen. To peel back the carpeting of the world and tumble into the stars.

The men were killed and the women and children enslaved. There are very few phrases both duller and more horrific. Because it is a fate so frequent to the pages of history, that unparalleled distance which separates our lives from the back-trodden past. that it becomes almost commonplace. We shudder and move on, marking the fates of the monarchs and kingdoms affected. Perhaps a famous scholar will bear mention, the strategies of generals and hand-wringing of politicians. They will step into the record, they will often escape. It will be those who cannot flee, whether by lack of means or because they have nowhere to go, who are left behind.

People were puzzles, Neema thought. Not fun ones, with prizes. They were puzzles that made no sense, and gave no answer, and broke your heart for no reason.

If it's something bigger than us, and it is, then we won't be able to stop it. Avalanche is coming, and we're in the path whether we like it or not. I've been there, deep inside it. I'm there now. Fuck, I'm all the way down. And it is so dark.

I can never give any of them what they really want: I can’t fix a marriage, and I can’t undo a lie, and I can’t raise the dead. And I can never tell them, because they think they just want answers.

"People so often miss what's in front of them, especially if they don't know what they're looking for."