Spear Cuts Through Water Quotes

This is a love story to its blade-dented bone.

I have lived a long time," she said. "And the longer I live, the more it surprises me, and saddens me, how wise the young must become to live in this world.

This body holds the body. This arm holds the spear. And the spear cuts through water.

If only there were a way to hold a moment in your hands and keep it alive forever.

The stories are everywhere, you cannot avoid them. Every day you tell a story to yourself; the details of your day become a part of your myth. It is reordered. It is made sense of.

If on listened, one could hear it in their voices. One can tell a lot, even in such a state, by the way someone speaks another's name.

They fought for nothing, which is why you see yourself in them.

Blame is an endless circle. And I seemed to be standing in the center of it.

The body holds the body. The arms hold the spear. And the spear cuts through water.

From far away, the laughter was a crackle of noise, like some distant fireworks lit in honor of a hero’s passing—and up close, it was almost overwhelming, a bright and wincing joy that would make one realize there is no correct way to shake hands with pain.

Keema stepped toward Jun, and touched him. His arm, his bony cheek, his lips, and Jun received that touch as he would the water from a waterfall, with eyes closed and face upturned. "You feel like the sun," Jun said.

They fought because it was the easiest language they spoke.

If one listened, one could hear it in their voices. One can tell a lot, even in such a state, by the way someone speaks another's name.

Some days you are so alone, you think you will collapse into a hard and dense rock. You tell him that you wish things were different. That you feel as though you have a sack over your shoulder, heavy and dragging, but you have no idea what’s inside the sack, or who gave it to you. It’s just there. It’s just yours. And you regret so many things. You’ve hurt people, you’ve embarrassed them, you’ve embarrassed yourself.

I thought how strange it was that I ever feared the end. That I had ever tried to escape it. And like that, it was done. My hand releasing from its fist. The battle fought. The life slipped from this old tether

There is no correct way to shake hands with pain.

And the longer I live, the more it surprises me, and saddens me, how wise the young must be to live in this world.

even now it remains hard for me to determine how I feel about the men who had sprung from me—what to do about my deep hatred, and my bottomless love, for them.

His voice is small when he says, out loud, “I was so close.” He is looking at Jun when he says this. Jun refuses to look at him; he knows that if he does, he will change his mind. Keema is looking at Jun and he is crying. I was so close.

Fathers leave in all sorts of ways. Some of them leave in the dark. Some leave only in their heads, while their bodies remain, staring at the world around them forever distantly. Others fade out over time, like an old photo rubbed raw. Many, gone in an instant.

People died so that we could live. Others suffered so that we may prosper. That is the way of the world. To believe otherwise is to never grow up.

You can fault the dancer, but more often than not, it is the dance itself that has to change.

I heard him call the Daware man’s name. The Daware man was on a skiff he had cut free from Luubu’s disintegrating ship. The Daware man called his name back. If one listened, one could hear it in their voices. One can tell a lot, even in such a state, by the way someone speaks another’s name.

One day in the endless loop of history, in the circular currents of its water, where there was no future, and no past, these steps would be inscribed in the shaft of an antique wooden weapon, and would tell the tale of these two warriors.

But none of them said anything, just as you had said nothing when your own father had left, for there are moments in this life that speak clearly for themselves.

I ate a god

even I cannot deny how difficult it can be, to accept that sometimes, to survive, we must change our course.

I was young when the weapon fell from the sky. I was young when my country was ended, on the whim of a bastard.

There can be no blasphemy when the god being blasphemed is dead.

But the truth of the matter was they fought because Jun was grieving and Keema was terrified and Jun was exhilarated and Keema was joyful and Jun was exhausted and Keema was repulsed.

But you know as well as any guilty party that no one thought stands alone. That there is a city within you, populated by both high- and lowborn beliefs, interjections, prayers, rantings.

Not even gods. We are mighty, but we are not invulnerable. Death simply must work harder to catch us—another few hundred years, a few thousand perhaps, until from our fallen corpse a new god is born, like a molting, and whatever we once were disappears. Our likes and our loves gone, as a new order rises in our stead. Up until the days of humans and their dances.

The people cast themselves down by the fuming boards while servants cut the roast, mixed jars of wine and water, and all the gods flew past like the night-breaths of spring. The chattering female flocks sat down by farther tables, their fresh prismatic garments gleaming in the moon as though a crowd of haughty peacocks played in moonlight. The queen’s throne softly spread with white furs of fox gaped desolate and bare, for Penelope felt ashamed to come before her guests after so much murder. Though all the guests were ravenous, they still refrained, turning their eyes upon their silent watchful lord till he should spill wine in libation for the Immortals. The king then filled a brimming cup, stood up and raised it high till in the moon the embossed adornments gleamed: Athena, dwarfed and slender, wrought in purest gold, pursued around the cup with double-pointed spear dark lowering herds of angry gods and hairy demons; she smiled and the sad tenderness of her lean face, and her embittered fearless glance, seemed almost human. Star-eyed Odysseus raised Athena’s goblet high and greeted all, but spoke in a beclouded mood: “In all my wandering voyages and torturous strife, the earth, the seas, the winds fought me with frenzied rage; I was in danger often, both through joy and grief, of losing priceless goodness, man’s most worthy face. I raised my arms to the high heavens and cried for help, but on my head gods hurled their lightning bolts, and laughed. I then clasped Mother Earth, but she changed many shapes, and whether as earthquake, beast, or woman, rushed to eat me; then like a child I gave my hopes to the sea in trust, piled on my ship my stubbornness, my cares, my virtues, the poor remaining plunder of god-fighting man, and then set sail; but suddenly a wild storm burst, and when I raised my eyes, the sea was strewn with wreckage. As I swam on, alone between sea and sky, with but my crooked heart for dog and company, I heard my mind, upon the crumpling battlements about my head, yelling with flailing crimson spear. Earth, sea, and sky rushed backward; I remained alone with a horned bow slung down my shoulder, shorn of gods and hopes, a free man standing in the wilderness. Old comrades, O young men, my island’s newest sprouts, I drink not to the gods but to man’s dauntless mind.” All shuddered, for the daring toast seemed sacrilege, and suddenly the hungry people shrank in spirit; They did not fully understand the impious words but saw flames lick like red curls about his savage head. The smell of roast was overpowering, choice meats steamed, and his bold speech was soon forgotten in hunger’s pangs; all fell to eating ravenously till their brains reeled. Under his lowering eyebrows Odysseus watched them sharply: "This is my people, a mess of bellies and stinking breath! These are my own minds, hands, and thighs, my loins and necks!" He muttered in his thorny beard, held back his hunger far from the feast and licked none of the steaming food.

With a wave of this body’s hand all the braziers are snuffed out in this Inverted Theater. The movement is sudden, as is the disappearance of the light, the darkness you are submerged in so complete you can feel it as a presence that surrounds you, blocking sight of even your own hand. It is not so much an absence as it is an overwhelming smog. You can feel it in your chest. The tightness of your breath. The darkness is closing in on you. Such was the quality of night in the Old Country, or what they then knew as the true dark, which, when the sun fell from its daily perch, was total and unyielding. What else could they have hoped for, with no moon in the sky?

The ship! The hearse!--the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat; "its wood could only be American!" Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent. "I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!" The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;--ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths.

I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! Let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow, - death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!" The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the groove; - ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths. For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight. But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched; - at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

Through the breach, they heard the waters pour, as mountain torrents down a flume. "The ship! The hearse!--the second hearse!" cried Ahab from the boat; "its wood could only be American!" Diving beneath the settling ship, the whale ran quivering along its keel; but turning under water, swiftly shot to the surface again, far off the other bow, but within a few yards of Ahab's boat, where, for a time, he lay quiescent. "I turn my body from the sun. What ho, Tashtego! let me hear thy hammer. Oh! ye three unsurrendered spires of mine; thou uncracked keel; and only god-bullied hull; thou firm deck, and haughty helm, and Pole-pointed prow,--death-glorious ship! must ye then perish, and without me? Am I cut off from the last fond pride of meanest shipwrecked captains? Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief. Ho, ho! from all your furthest bounds, pour ye now in, ye bold billows of my whole foregone life, and top this one piled comber of my death! Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! THUS, I give up the spear!" The harpoon was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;--ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in its depths. For an instant, the tranced boat's crew stood still; then turned. "The ship? Great God, where is the ship?" Soon they through dim, bewildering mediums saw her sidelong fading phantom, as in the gaseous Fata Morgana; only the uppermost masts out of water; while fixed by infatuation, or fidelity, or fate, to their once lofty perches, the pagan harpooneers still maintained their sinking lookouts on the sea. And now, concentric circles seized the lone boat itself, and all its crew, and each floating oar, and every lance-pole, and spinning, animate and inanimate, all round and round in one vortex, carried the smallest chip of the Pequod out of sight. But as the last whelmings intermixingly poured themselves over the sunken head of the Indian at the mainmast, leaving a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched;--at that instant, a red arm and a hammer hovered backwardly uplifted in the open air, in the act of nailing the flag faster and yet faster to the subsiding spar. A sky-hawk that tauntingly had followed the main-truck downwards from its natural home among the stars, pecking at the flag, and incommoding Tashtego there; this bird now chanced to intercept its broad fluttering wing between the hammer and the wood; and simultaneously feeling that etherial thrill, the submerged savage beneath, in his death-gasp, kept his hammer frozen there; and so the bird of heaven, with archangelic shrieks, and his imperial beak thrust upwards, and his whole captive form folded in the flag of Ahab, went down with his ship, which, like Satan, would not sink to hell till she had dragged a living part of heaven along with her, and helmeted herself with it. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.

This man. This man you have never met. This man who may be already dead, or, if not dead, then driven mad by the torture. This man who may not even be your father—you risk everything to see him safely from Joyrock.” “I do, Lord Induun.” “At least tell me why.” She closed her eyes. “What a country we will be,” she said, “when we are led by a man who has to ask such a question.

It is nonsense to your ears, but the more you listen, the clearer it is that not only are you all from different places but also different times, different eras, and it strikes you as notable, special even, that you are all gathered here in this place outside of time.

In that room, they were of me. Because we all shared the heat of that mental sympathy; of a father who could not help himself

They are Araya’s descendant. One of many. As is everyone in this theater. Everyone here tonight has a root, dug deep, that can be followed into the earth, all the way to where the grave of Araya’s family makes its soil. She never told you she had a daughter.” Keema shakes his head, stunned. “Not once did it come up in the short time I knew her.” “Judge not the parent who keeps silent to their child’s cry. There are too many reasons in heaven and earth to disappoint the ones we care for.” This moonlit body steps back. “But this moment is between the two of you.” It bows. “Speak your piece.

You know as well as I that there are no odds in this world. There is only the Rhythm, and the Dance. That we are but the dancers.

Fathers leave in all sorts of ways. Some of them leave in the dark. Some leave only in their heads, while their bodies remain, staring at the world around them forever distantly. Others fade out over time, like an old photo rubbed raw.

I have lived a long time,” she said. “And the longer I live, the more it surprises me, and saddens me, how wise the young must become to live in this world.

What a country we will be,” she said, “when we are led by a man who has to ask such a question.

and it was in such a dark place that they received, from somewhere, from one of their number who no longer was, the image of a morning spent drifting down a calm and sun-touched river.

Yes,” she said. “On your oath as a Daware man, swear to me you will leave.” He looked into her eyes. “I swear it.” “Swear that you will bring this spear with you to the coast. Swear you will bring it to a soldier named Shan.” “I swear it,” he said. “What would you have me tell this Shan?” There were tears in Araya’s eyes. “I do not know, Keema of the Daware Tribe. What would you tell someone whose forgiveness you sought? Think on that, and when you get there, tell her something kind.” She smiled. “Go then,” she said. “Your ride is leaving.

Without turning in His chair, He merely held up a finger, and the attendant went stiff, as if my spine had turned to stone, I could not blink my eyes, hot tears rolling down frozen cheeks, the emperor’s fingers making shapes in the air, the attendant’s body contorting in accordance with these shapes, my scream breathless and silent as my arm twisted out of its joint and my leg snapped back, my heel pressed between my shoulder blades, His fingers weaving the invisible threads in the air as my body folded inward and inward, until all that remained of the man was a box of twisted flesh that somehow still rattled with breath, my breath on my toes, and my eyes, bulged from their sockets, peering through this cage of limbs at My Smiling Sun, who looked down on His creation with a satisfied air, remembering once more His immense power. And when later I was discovered, like the discarded toy I was, a guard sympathetic to my state brought me to my lover, who with trembling hands held me to their breast before I then breathed my last, and returned to the Sleeping Sea, wingless, and free.

Titles were hard to shake in those days. They branded a person as sure as a hot iron on a flank. Some titles were cultivated. They offered a kind of protection, social or otherwise, to those who wore them, whether that be as a warning or a feint.

It is all a performance, this business. People trusted you if you first blinded them with color.

I have lived a long time. And the longer I live, the more it surprises me, and saddens me, how wise the young must become to live in this world.

One cannot go charging headfirst into battle; heart alone will not win the day; the warrior who does not plan, plans to fail. Trite missives of glory won, and all but useless in this grim scenario.

And never would he forget the clarity he then saw in the reader's eyes as he relayed him his vision: that Keema's search, lifelong and unending, would find its completion at Tiger Gate Checkpoint. "You search for purpose," the reader said. "You will find it there.

And Keema realized it was not sweat that poured down Jun's chin, but tears, for finally, in the calm of this syncopation, we were quieted, the river cleaned of bodies, the knife taken out of a child's back, and a cold rain falling on the burning house, until the hand in the window slipped away and all that remained was smolder.

There were some memories inside of him that were like picking up a sharp rock, but not this one. This one was like a note scribbled on a piece of ripped parchment, worn from its time in the pocket, the message dire, but the writing soft and faded.

But where the Eight Emperor or His sons might greet such a realization in terror, to have lost such control, such dominion, there was no fear, no anger in these warriors' hearts, for as they looked at each other in the full moonshine of that night, they saw that they did not need the power of a god to understand how deeply they were wanted.

But where the Eighth Emperor or His sons might greet such a realization in terror, to have lost such control, such dominion, there was no fear, no anger in these warriors' hearts, for as they looked at each other in the full moonshine of that night, they saw that they did not need the power of a god to understand how deeply they were wanted.

Their unearned hope that once they reached the outskirts of the Divine City, all would become as it was once again—a hope for a return to normalcy, even if that normalcy was fear and distrust and hunger, for at least the fear, the distrust, the hunger were familiar.

He shook his head wearily at this child. “Not the most interesting of ends for the scribes to record as they finish your brief, unsatisfying biography.” “A satisfying biography was never my aim,” she said.

I’d assumed you were meeting with people not as…wealthy.” “Of course we are,” Jun said. “We want to win.

We are called to our parents like sirens.

there is no barrier in this life that love cannot overcome.

for there is no barrier in this life that love cannot overcome.

We might try to go back,” your lola said, staring out the window with her large, wet eyes, “but we only get one turn. One invite. So do not waste it. If nothing else, remember that.

I thought how strange it was that I ever feared the end. That I had ever tried to escape it. And like that, it was done. My hand releasing from its fist. The battle fought. The life slipped from this old tether.

There was just bone.

One might think it amazing that in face of such overwhelming evidence, no effort was made to save themselves. But though I cannot help but wish that when the world quirks and shudders, we have the wherewithal to listen, even I cannot deny how difficult it can be, to accept that sometimes, to survive, we must change our course.

You are a bitter old thing,” the Defect said. And then it entertained Her not a moment further, choosing instead to ruminate some more on the nature of beauty and the joy of counting the blades of grass, and fish. But the empress was successful in reminding the creature that this was all fleeting. It did its best impression of a sigh. When the Defect was first born from the inverted womb in the Shrike Room beside the heat beds, it received, all at once, like a waterfall, the memories of all the tortoises that had come before it, and all that now yet lived. The first few weeks of life were akin to the storms of the abyss as it learned to parse the assault of imagery and sound and sense, to understand the context it had been given and its place in the world. But with enough time it was able to attain an awareness of what it meant to be a tortoise, for all the memories it had been given were those of pain and humiliation, of themselves and of others—and yet there were precious few memories of joy. The cicadas rattled. The frogs skipped. “This is a beautiful morning,” it said. The creature pocketed the memory. The quiet river and the rolling clouds and the tall yellow grass. It pocketed the sweet smell and the light snoring of the small humans who flanked its shell. It pocketed the fiery sun and the green-gray water and the sound of directionless birdsong. Turned it into a memory worth keeping. And it promised itself that one day, when it was safe to, it would share with its brethren this memory of a beautiful morning; without chains, or hungry heart.

You feel as though you have a sack on your shoulder, heavy and dragging, but you have no idea what's inside the sack, or who gave it to you. It's just there

Strange are the ways of Men, Legolas! Here they have one of the marvels of the Northern World, and what do they say of it? Caves, they say! Caves! Holes to fly to in time of war, to store fodder in! My good Legolas, do you know that the caverns of Helm’s Deep are vast and beautiful? There would be an endless pilgrimage of Dwarves, merely to gaze at them, if such things were known to be. Aye indeed, they would pay pure gold for a brief glance!’ ‘And I would give gold to be excused,’ said Legolas; ‘and double to be let out, if I strayed in!’ ‘You have not seen, so I forgive your jest,’ said Gimli. ‘But you speak like a fool. Do you think those halls are fair, where your King dwells under the hill in Mirkwood, and Dwarves helped in their making long ago? They are but hovels compared with the caverns I have seen here: immeasurable halls, filled with an everlasting music of water that tinkles into pools, as fair as Kheled-zâram in the starlight. ‘And, Legolas, when the torches are kindled and men walk on the sandy floors under the echoing domes, ah! then, Legolas, gems and crystals and veins of precious ore glint in the polished walls; and the light glows through folded marbles, shell-like, translucent as the living hands of Queen Galadriel. There are columns of white and saffron and dawn-rose, Legolas, fluted and twisted into dreamlike forms; they spring up from many-coloured floors to meet the glistening pendants of the roof: wings, ropes, curtains fine as frozen clouds; spears, banners, pinnacles of suspended palaces! Still lakes mirror them: a glimmering world looks up from dark pools covered with clear glass; cities. such as the mind of Durin could scarce have imagined in his sleep, stretch on through avenues and pillared courts, on into the dark recesses where no light can come. And plink! a silver drop falls, and the round wrinkles in the glass make all the towers bend and waver like weeds and corals in a grotto of the sea. Then evening comes: they fade and twinkle out; the torches pass on into another chamber and another dream. There is chamber after chamber, Legolas; hall opening out of hall, dome after dome, stair beyond stair; and still the winding paths lead on into the mountains’ heart. Caves! The Caverns of Helm’s Deep! Happy was the chance that drove me there! It makes me weep to leave them.’ ‘Then I will wish you this fortune for your comfort, Gimli,’ said the Elf, ‘that you may come safe from war and return to see them again. But do not tell all your kindred! There seems little left for them to do, from your account. Maybe the men of this land are wise to say little: one family of busy dwarves with hammer and chisel might mar more than they made.’ ‘No, you do not understand,’ said Gimli. ‘No dwarf could be unmoved by such loveliness. None of Durin’s race would mine those caves for stones or ore, not if diamonds and gold could be got there. Do you cut down groves of blossoming trees in the spring-time for firewood? We would tend these glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap – a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole anxious day – so we could work, and as the years went by, we should open up new ways, and display far chambers that are still dark, glimpsed only as a void beyond fissures in the rock. And lights, Legolas! We should make lights, such lamps as once shone in Khazaddûm; and when we wished we would drive away the night that has lain there since the hills were made; and when we desired rest, we would let the night return.