Quotes About Vulnerability

The child would wake in the night to her mother's dream cries-a man coming to steal her, steal her child, steal her payment-and her mother would not eat, only hunch over the bowel and scry, and follow the girl about with haunted eyes.

They were afraid of the child. Fursey didn't know whether to pity her or be glad for her. Fear could always be used.

Showing off her best points was a habit that saved her life more than once.

Her tenderness was unbearable. She was nine years old. She knew how to kiss me better: a simple thing, but one I could never have taught her. And I had come here to save her.

He looked so small and wounded in his bright jacket that I opened my arms and pulled him in. He wrapped his hands around my hips, leaned his forehead on my breastbone and wept. He smelled of woodsmoke and tea.

He held her gaze this time, though it made him sweat, and this time it was she who looked away.

Lying naked and cold beneath the perfect, whispering dark, I imagined I could feel the curve of the earth under my back, that I circled the whole planet so that my soles touched the top of my head and I blended with the dirt.

The way my parents see me, more Crip than Kick, I saw I've been doing that to myself. Cutting myself down to size before anyone else could do it." "Protecting yourself." "Making myself small.

I know how to look after myself; I have the money to buy whatever I need. Neither of these things is any protection for the raw wound that is grief, and this man sat like a sack of sharp salt in the middle of the only safe place I knew.

To not being nine years old and at the mercy of the world.

Peretur wanted to reach out and touch her hand, but Nimuë looked brittle enough to fall apart. So she just waited.

The world felt rude and fragile and new as though she had lately risen from her sickbed.

For a moment my face hung near the opening of her robe, and I breathed in the soft, buttered-toast scent of sleepy, naked woman.

For some reason it wasn't as hard to have her touch me, now that she knew my name. Her fingers were strong and brisk. I wondered who she went home to, whether she washed their hair for them in the shower or bath, if she knew how easy it would be to hurt me across the larynx with a shampoo bottle and watch me choke to death. I almost sat up.

Perhaps there was no magic for faling off your own mount and dying alone and unmasked.

The thought of going alone into the king's tent full of men who had just killed other men made her feel dizzy.

By the time they saw the outer walls of Caer Leon, her legs were steadier though inside she felt a shiver like an ash key twirling too fast in the wind.

First the half-lidded look, then the widening eyes, the black pupils swelling like ink dropped in water, swallowing the blue centres leaving the outer pleats of his eyes green and glistening, swarming like flies looking for something to eat, someone to hurt to make himself strong and safe.

Have you kissed anyone? Boldcloak? Your gemæcce?" Hild shook her head. "Well, perhaps they were frightened of kissing the king's seer. But I'm not. I know what you need.

Bed games were one thing, keys another.

Her mother couldn't read. Her mother hadn't noticed the signs of a bad winter. Cian wasn't even there. Hereswith was far away, and Fursey. She had taken a double risk and there was no one to help her.

I was the one who helped, the competent one, armored and invulnerable. Aud rhymes with proud.

She had no idea why it was so much harder for her to folk in Anglisc to anyone but Begu, it just was, though these last weeks she was learning how to let the words come. It helped if there was no weightiness behind them, no import; if they were only words with no life or death hanging in the balance.

How had she managed to get inside me, slip between my ribs and rest against my heart without me feeling it?