après moi, le déluge

Advice to the witch children: 1. Step softly. 2. Coat your words in honey, but keep your nails as claws. 3. Listen to the ghosts. 4. Carry always a bird in your chest and a lion in your head. 5. Know that age is not wisdom, and there is as much to be learned from trees as from the books they become. 6. You are not born with a family. Make one. 7. Remember that a thing does not need purpose to have beauty. 8. Do not allow yourself to become chained to logic and order. 9. Revel in chaos, then bend it to your will. 10. Use your wide eyes for watching, your rabbit feet for running, your small size for slipping away unseen. 11. Let them underestimate you. 12. When you open your mouth and frogs leap out, do not be ashamed. 13. You are the changeling children, magic born into small bodies with untried hearts. Do not waste them.

it’s good to bring older dogs to water so they can relax their arthritic joints and get a little exercise.