Tag: the bear and the nightingale

mashamorevna:

He had never thought of her as girlish, but the last trace of softness was gone. The quick brain, the strong limbs were there: fiercely, almost defiantly present, though concealed beneath her encumbering dress.  She was more feminine than she had ever been, and less.

Witch. The word drifted across his mind.  
We call such women so, because we have no other name.

– (Katherine Arden, The Bear and the Nightingale)

achilleius:

the bear and the nightingale by katherine arden

All my life, I have been told ‘go’ and ‘come.’ I am told how I will live, and I am told how I must die. I must be a man’s servant and a mare for his pleasure, or I must hide myself behind walls and surrender my flesh to a cold, silent god. I would walk into the jaws of hell itself, if it were a path of my own choosing. I would rather die tomorrow in the forest than live a hundred years of the life appointed me.

raadelma:

Exhaustion hit her like a wave. She yanked back from the brink of sleep, suddenly frightened. “No,” she whispered. “Don’t—I could not bear it again.”   

“He will not come back,” returned Morozko. His voice was steady against her ear. She felt the years in him, and the strength. “All will be well.”  

 “Don’t go,” she whispered. 

Something crossed his face that she could not read. “I will not,” he said. And then it did not matter. Sleep was a great dark wave, and it washed over her and through her. 

“Sleep is cousin to death, Vasya,” he murmured over her head. “And both are mine.”
The Bear and The Nightingale