Quotes About Connection

Now when she spied on women and men she crept close and closer, closer than was safe, because she was drawn to the curve of a lip, the gleam of sweat on a throat, and she longed to feel the weigh of glossy hair on her skin.

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

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.

Their friendship grew back, like tree bark growing over a wound. But they did not fight anyone.

Hereswith's eyes were so blue. Sister blue.

Watch men and women, her mother had said, put yourself inside them. Imagine what they're thinking.

The woman knelt by Peretur, close enough to touch her on the knee, though she did not.

You'll be well," Hereswith said. "I'll be well. I'm older and I say so. And on your birthday and mine, we'll drink a toast, each to the other, and one day we'll hold hands again.

Not that I'm sure I want to have a child, you know? We've enough to deal with, with Jink's two. But it would be nice to have the choice. It would make me feel as though I belong.

Peretur did not argue, she did not think of arguing. They were in accord, even though she could no longer see into Nimuë, in that shared moment she felt-and knew Nimuë felt-that they had known each other all their lives.

Sometimes I used my fingers, digging down into the rich dirt, feeling it push under my nails. No doubt I'd regret it later, but it was good to feel so much life under my hands.

I kissed her, and stroked the soft planes of flank and thigh, teased with a fingertip and breath and gaze, and when she shuddered like a kite on a long line, when she began to whip and plunge, when she begged me, I turned her and steadied her and let her loose. It was always the same. They flew and I flew, but to different places.

Her hand felt good in Peretur's, warm, more than warm.

Hild realised that every shape the man's body made refused the words, and the bard was nodding along. The bard had made the speech.

I don't want to be here alone. I want you to stay." "People don't stay just because you want them to.

Now his knowledge was her knowledge.

Gwladus smiled, that rich slow curve that blotted out everything but right here, right now, then leaned in and kissed her.

In the flickering ochre-and-gold light, Peretur saw the heat rise in Nimuë's cheeks, and her lips redder, and her own belly warmed, and she filled with another hunger.

Her sister and gemæcce already had the beginning of a kin web here in a foreign land. They wouldn't be all alone.

I'm your friend. I have been for a long time, even if I sometimes wonder if you know what that means.

She knew that scent, and her need rose like the tide.

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.

She loved the firm pressure of Gwladus's hand on her crown, the steady strokes of the brush, and the scent of dried lavender and spicy tansy rising from her skirts.