Sublime

“Perhaps we don’t mean the same thing by choice, Mr Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we’re not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs.

then slowly in the months that followed came his growing realization that the danger was in her mind, and he had to protect her all the more.

ribald

They turn up frequently in auctions, in book-dealers’ catalogues, and the like. Usually their significance remains mysterious;

‘I was sorry,’ said Thomas gravely, ‘to hear of your loss. The death of a father,’ he said, frowning at the window, ‘is at the same time both quite proper in the order of things, and incomprehensibly stupid.’ ‘I never saw him use it,’ said Carleton, containing tears, ‘and I don’t know how it works. It is a planisphere. A map of the stars.’

fecklessness

Our lives will be different for a while. But we shall survive, and when things return to what they should be, and the Arctic freezes once more, we shall still be alive to go back and claim it.