Otega Quotes

I tell lies better than I tell truths,’” I said. It was a quote from some poetry I had read on the side of a building with Otega on one of our excursions. I am a Shotet. I am sharp as broken glass, and just as fragile. I tell lies better than I tell truths. I see all of the galaxy and never catch a glimpse of it.

Can I speak with you in private, please?” “You phrase it like a question when it’s really an order,” Otega said, waggling her eyebrows. “Follow me. I trust you don’t mind chatting in the garbage closet.” “Mind? I’ve always wanted to spend time in a garbage closet,” I said, wry, and followed her through the narrow galley to a door in the back.

Kereseth, I presume. Cyra didn’t say you were so…” She paused. Cyra’s eyebrows popped up like they were on springs. She was leaning against the wall, arms folded, chewing on a lock of hair. Sometimes she stuck it in her mouth without noticing. Then she’d spit it out, with a look of surprise, like it had crept into her mouth on its own. “…tall,” Otega finished. Akos wondered what word she would have chosen, if she felt comfortable being honest. “Not sure why she would have mentioned that,” Akos replied. It was easy to be comfortable around Otega; he slid into it without thinking much about it. “She’s tall, too, after all.” “Yes. Quite tall, the lot of you,” Otega said, distantly.

The clatter of pans stopped when I walked into the kitchens. A smaller selection of our staff worked on the sojourn ship than in Noavek manor, but I recognized some of the faces. And the gifts, too--one of the scrubbers was making the pots float, suds dripping on the backs of his hands, and one of the choppers was doing the task with her eyes closed, the knife strokes clean and even. Otega had her head in the coldbox. When silence fell, she straightened, and wiped her hands off on her apron. “Ah, Cyra,” she said. “No one makes a room quiet like you.” The other staff stared openly at her for her familiarity, but I only laughed a little. Even when I hadn’t seen her in a while--I had surpassed her capacity to teach me last season; now we saw each other only rarely, in passing--she fell back into our old rhythms without trouble. “It’s a unique talent,” I replied.

“All I know is that the pain wants to be shared.” “Does it?” The dancer smiled a little. “Even with Akos?” “The pain isn’t me; it doesn’t discriminate,” I said. “The pain is my curse.” “No, no,” the dancer said, her dark eyes locked on mine. But they weren’t brown anymore, as they had been when I saw her perform in the dining room; they were gray, and wary. Akos’s eyes, familiar to me even in a dream. He had taken her place, perched at the edge of the seat as if ready to take flight, his long body dwarfing the chair. “Every currentgift carries a curse,” he said. “But no gift is only a curse.” “The gift part of it is that no one can hurt me,” I said. But even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. People could still hurt me. They didn’t need to touch me to do it--they didn’t even need to torture me to do it. As long as I cared about my life, as long as I cared about Akos’s life, or the lives of renegades I barely knew, I was as vulnerable as everyone else was to hurt. I blinked at him as a different answer came to me. “You told me I was more than a knife, more than a weapon,” I said. “Maybe you’re right.” He smiled that small, familiar smile that creased his cheek. “The gift,” I said, “is the strength the curse has given me.” The new answer was like a blooming hushflower, petals unfurling. “I can bear it. I can bear pain. I can bear anything.” He reached for my cheek. He became the dancer, and my mother, and Otega, in turn.

The current’s light and color is always strongest over our planet,” I said to Akos in a low voice. “Wrapped three times around it, Shotet legend says—which is why our Shotet ancestors chose to settle here. But its intensity fluctuates around the other planets, anointing one after another, with no discernible pattern. Every season we follow its leading, then we land, and scavenge.” “Why?” Akos murmured back. We cull each planet’s wisdom and take it for our own, Otega had said, crouched down beside me at one of our lessons. And when we do that, we show them what about them is worthy of their appreciation. We reveal them to themselves.

The current’s light and color is always strongest over our planet,” I said to Akos in a low voice. “Wrapped three times around it, Shotet legend says—which is why our Shotet ancestors chose to settle here. But its intensity fluctuates around the other planets, anointing one after another, with no discernible pattern. Every season we follow its leading, then we land, and scavenge.” “Why?” Akos murmured back. We cull each planet’s wisdom and take it for our own, Otega had said, crouched down beside me at one of our lessons. And when we do that, we show them what about them is worthy of their appreciation. We reveal them to themselves