Troll Love Quotes

Elliot was trying to teach himself trollish via a two-hundred-year-old book by a man who’d had a traumatic break-up with a troll. This meant a lot of commentary along the lines of “This is how trolls say I love you. FOOTNOTE: BUT THEY DON’T MEAN IT!

Loki," I said. "Hey, Princess." He smiled dazedly as he looked up at me. "What's wrong?" "Nothing." I smiled and shook my head. "Not anymore." "What's this?" He took my hair and held it out so i could see. A curl near the front had gone completely silver. "I take a nap, and you go gray?" "You didn't take a nap." I laughed. "Don't you remember what happened?" He furrowed his brow, trying to remember, and understanding flashed in his eyes. "I remember..." Loki touched my face. "I remember that I love you." I bent down, kissing him full on the mouth, and he held me to him.

The Librarian considered matters for a while. So…a dwarf and a troll. He preferred both species to humans. For one thing, neither of them were great readers. The Librarian was, of course, very much in favor of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them. He liked people who loved and respected books, and the best way to do that, in the Librarian’s opinion, was to leave them on the shelves where Nature intended them to be.

And I told you that one night wan't enough." Loki leaned down, kissing me deeply and pressing me to him. I didn't even attempt to resist. I wrapped my arms around his neck. It wasn't the we had kissed before, not as hungry or fevered. This was something different, nicer. We were holding onto each other, knowing this might be the last time we could. It felt sweet and hopeful and tragic all at once. When he stopped kissing me he rested his forehead against mine. He breathed as if struggling to catch his breath. i reached up and touched his face, his skin smooth and cool beneath my hand. Loki lifted his head so he could look me in the eyes, and I saw something in them, something I'd never seen before. Something pure and unadulterated, and my heart seemed to grow with the warmth of my love for him. I didn't know how it happened or when it had, but I knew it with complete certainty. I had fallen in love with Loki, more intensely than anything I had felt for anyone before.

As a woman, my body is scrutinized, policed, and treated as a public commodity. As a fat woman, my body is also lampooned, openly reviled, and associated with moral and intellectual failure. My body limits my job prospects, access to medical care and fair trials, and – the one thing Hollywood movies and Internet trolls most agree on – my ability to be loved. So the subtext, when a thin person asks a fat person, ‘Where do you get your confidence?’ is, ‘You must be some sort of alien because if I looked like you, I would definitely throw myself into the sea.

This longing to commit a madness stays with us throughout our lives. Who has not, when standing with someone by an abyss or high up on a tower, had a sudden impulse to push the other over? And how is it that we hurt those we love although we know that remorse will follow? Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves. To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul. To write is to sit in judgment on oneself. —Henrik Ibsen

Please, please, for the love of trolls and other blessed creatures, stop wandering around in the forest like yer a bat instead of a wee lady!

I’m a cave troll. I’m so unpleasant to be around, I make him clumsy. The sheer power I hold.

You sit right next to me. Still you don't seem close to me.

I hated and loved him in turns, as witches will do, for our hearts are strange and inexplicable.

There are plenty of people I don’t understand. I suppose some are trolls and some aren’t. God doesn’t see people the way I do, though. The ones I see as problems, God sees as sons and daughters, made in His image. The ones I see as difficult, He sees as delightfully different. The fact is, what skews my view of people who are sometimes hard to be around is that God is working on different things in their lives than He is working on in mine.

There, then, is the role of the amateur: to look the world back to grace. There, too, is the necessity of his work: His tribe must be in short supply; his job has gone begging. The world looks as if it has been left in the custody of a pack of trolls. Indeed, the whole distinction between art and trash, between food and garbage, depends on the presence or absence of the loving eye. Turn a statue over to a boor, and his boredom will break it to bits - witness the ruined monuments of antiquity. On the other hand, turn a shack over to a lover; for all its poverty, its lights and shadows warm a little and its numbed surfaces prickle with feeling.

Conner moaned a long weary sound under his breath. He had almost forgotten about the young troll queen who had been madly in love with him since they met. “Gosh, I hope divorce exists in this world,” he said.

One of DeVos’s first acts of power was to rescind Obama’s Title IX guidelines, which she called “a failed system.” Survivor advocates are no fans of DeVos. But you know who loves her? Guys who’ve been accused of rape.

I don’t know," she said. "I’m not sure you would like me in real life. I’m a lot different there, you know. I don’t even look the same." " I don’t care if you look like a troll with warts," Sir Leo declared, taking her hand in his. "I love you.

Happiness, like love, is the choice to dwell on the deeper joy, deeper contentment

You look like a troll doll, a fucking demented troll doll.

You know that eye-to-eye recognition, when two people look deeply into each other's pupils, and burrow to the soul? It usually comes before love. I mean the clear, deep, milk-eyed recognition expressed by the poet Donne. Their eyebeams twisted and did thread their eyes upon a double string. My father recognized that the Professor was a Troll, and the Professor recognized my father's recognition. Both of them knew that the Professor had eaten his wife. - The Troll

When we hole up in our own trenches, we lose sight of reality. We’re lured into thinking that a small, hate-mongering minority reflects all humankind. Like the handful of anonymous internet trolls that are responsible for almost all the vitriol on Twitter and Facebook. And even the most caustic keyboard crusader may at other times be a thoughtful friend or loving caregiver.

There is a saturation of books on Amazon due to a sudden get-rich-quick surge in "everyone can be authors" seminars similar to the house flipping ones in the early 2000s which led to the housing bubble and an economic slowdown in the U.S. To distinguish quality books from those get-rich-quick ones, look at the author's track record - worldwide recognition as books that garnered credible awards, authors who speak at book industry events, authors who speak at schools, authors whose books are reference materials and reading sources at school and libraries. Get-rich books have a system to get over 500 reviews quickly, manipulates the Kindle Unlimited algorithm, and encourage collusion in the marketplace to knock out rivals. Be wary of trolls who are utilized to knock down the rankings of rival's books too. Once people have heard there is money to be made as a self-published author, just like house flipping, a cottage industry has risen to take advantage of it and turn book publishing into a get rich scheme, which is a shame for all the book publishers and authors, like me, who had published for the love of books, to write to help society, and for the love of literature. Kailin Gow, Parents and Books

This book was made possible by the letter “ø.” Also the letter “æ.” The first time I saw them, I fell in love and just had to learn the language they belonged to. That language turned out to be Norwegian, with its rich history of folk tales about trolls and polar bears and clever young lads and lasses out to make their fortune. I only hope that I didn’t offend my Danish blacksmith forbears by choosing to study Norwegian instead of Danish in college.

He read The Lord of the Rings for what I’m estimating the millionth time, one of his greatest loves and greatest comforts since he’d first discovered it, back when he was nine and lost and lonely and his favorite librarian had said, Here, try this, and with one suggestion changed his life. Got through almost the whole trilogy, but then the line “and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls” and he had to stop, his head and heart hurting too much.

He was rowed down from the north in a leather skiff manned by a crew of trolls. His fur cape was caked with candle wax, his brow stained blue by wine - though the latter was seldom noticed due to the fox mask he wore at-all times. A quill in his teeth, a solitary teardrop a-squirm in his palm, he was the young poet prince of Montreal, handsome, immaculate, searching for sturdier doors to nail his poignant verses on. In Manhattan, grit drifted into his ink bottle. In Vienna, his spice box exploded. On the Greek island of Hydra, Orpheus came to him at dawn astride a transparent donkey and restrung his cheap guitar. From that moment on, he shamelessly and willingly exposed himself to the contagion of music. To the secretly religious curiosity of the traveler was added the openly foolhardy dignity of the troubadour. By the time he returned to America, songs were working in him like bees in an attic. Connoisseurs developed cravings for his nocturnal honey, despite the fact that hearts were occasionally stung. Now, thirty years later, as society staggers towards the millennium - nailing and screeching at the while, like an orangutan with a steak knife in its side - Leonard Cohen, his vision, his gift, his perseverance, are finally getting their due. It may be because he speaks to this wounded zeitgeist with particular eloquence and accuracy, it may be merely cultural time-lag, another example of the slow-to-catch-on many opening their ears belatedly to what the few have been hearing all along. In any case, the sparkle curtain has shredded, the boogie-woogie gate has rocked loose from its hinges, and here sits L. Cohen at an altar in the garden, solemnly enjoying new-found popularity and expanded respect. From the beginning, his musical peers have recognized Cohen´s ability to establish succinct analogies among life´s realities, his talent for creating intimate relationships between the interior world of longing and language and the exterior world of trains and violins. Even those performers who have neither "covered" his compositions nor been overtly influenced by them have professed to admire their artfulness: the darkly delicious melodies - aural bouquets of gardenia and thistle - that bring to mind an electrified, de-Germanized Kurt Weill; the playfully (and therefore dangerously) mournful lyrics that can peel the apple of love and the peach of lust with a knife that cuts all the way to the mystery, a layer Cole Porter just could`t expose. It is their desire to honor L. Cohen, songwriter, that has prompted a delegation of our brightest artists to climb, one by one, joss sticks smoldering, the steep and salty staircase in the Tower of Song.

Being a troll, he loved the earth. A troll’s love for the earth is a peculiar thing—it is something like the way you and I love our parents and our dogs and our favorite novels and the stuffed rabbits we have had since we were in our cradles and the very best thing we have ever done with our own two hands, all smashed up together in a rough, enormous ball of feeling the size of a planet.

So fare thee well, poor devil of a Sub-Sub, whose commentator I am. Thou belongest to that hopeless, sallow tribe which no wine of this world will ever warm; and for whom even Pale Sherry would be too rosy-strong; but with whom one sometimes loves to sit, and feel poor-devilish, too; and grow convivial upon tears; and say to them bluntly, with full eyes and empty glasses, and in not altogether unpleasant sadness—Give it up, Sub-Subs! For by how much the more pains ye take to please the world, by so much the more shall ye for ever go thankless!

Like that breeder-woman sitting at the bar, who thinks it's a buzz to go into a gay joint and has no doubt heard somewhere that this is one. Her lurid get-up's a joke, ludicrous. She's the type who dons the camouflage-green combat trousers, wraps a bandanna around her head and paints herself with black lipstick, imagining all the lesbians in the joint'll have the hots for her. Not so much imagining as secretly hoping. Naturally, no one goes and sits with her. She's been here before, and everyone gives the ice-cold shoulder, yet she still turns up again and again. Someone might argue we're zoo animals for her. But I've another theory. For her, we're noble savages, a kind of grey area outside the respectable, minutely organized community, an untamed wilderness it takes a lot of guts to step into. But if you do dare, there's a glorious smell of freedom floating around your trousers and giving the finger to society, making whoever an instant anarchist. Certainly, for her, coming here is like putting a washable tattoo on your shoulder : there's the thrill of deviance with none of the dull commitment - and she'll never have to wonder whether she's too weird to be seen out before dark.

Trannies, your families will never love you. You are living a lie & you know it. End your miserable existence. Commit suicide now. —Unknown troll

Nice pen.” ”It’s the most beautiful pen I know, I always carry it with me because I want them to know that I love them”, the troll says. ”Who?” ”The letters.

If a lady offers you a kindness, you absolutely have to accept

Loving everyone who loves you is absolutely worth it. Hating anyone who hates you is just not worth it.

It is said, once a wise man from the far North told me; it is said that there are in certain parts of Scandinavia cities within cities like there are circles within circles; existent yet invisible. And those cities are inhabited by creatures more terrible than imagination can create : man-shaped but man-devouring, as black and as silent as the night they prowl in.

Jack stepped onstage dressed in jeans, sneakers, and a T-shirt. "I'm the handsome Butterboy," Jack announced. "I'm the queen's soul mate. I just don't know it yet because I'm emotionally immature. Sorry, Conner." Conner was so embarrassed, he sank into his seat and covered his face with his backpack. Trollbella was sporting a wide grin - this was her favorite part of the show. Red struck a theatrical pose with her hands over her heart. "Be still my heart, for I am in love!" Red announced. "Now, Peter!" Trollbella whispered. Peter soared out from backstage and flew in circles over the audience. The children laughed and clapped - they reached up and tried to touch him. Conner was irritated by how much they were enjoying the show. "Hello, Butterboy!" Red said to Jack. "Would you like to be my king and rule the trolls and goblins with me? Oh, how happy we will be together!" "Oh boy, that sounds wonderful!" Jack said. "How lucky I am to be loved by such a beautiful and brilliant troll queen. I will never find someone like her ever again - nope, not once, no how, no way, not going to happen! I want to be with Trollbella for all eternity!" "I never said that!" Conner shouted from his seat. "She's making this up!

I know that trolls are fundamentally sad people; I know that I've already defeated them in every substantive arena - by being smart, by being happy, by being successful, by being listened to, by being loved.

The tug of self-destruction and the desire to defy mortality by creating an everlasting mark upon this world are uneasy acquaintances. The strident edginess behind a writer’s searchlight voice is a product of the natural tension that engenders when an apathetic writer believes death could arrive tonight. Stunned by fear of a hard deadline, the writer is jolted from their state of laziness and mental neglect that trolling inertia dampens their aptitude to love life.

But Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words or things; and their language was actually more degraded and filthy than I have shown it. I do not suppose that any will wish for a closer rendering, though models are easy to find. Much the same sort of talk can still be heard among the orc-minded; dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long removed from good to retain even verbal vigour, save in the ears of those to whom only the squalid sounds strong.

We know what the law is, Mister Po-leess-maan. The law is the land. You say, "This is my land", but you did not make the land. You did not make your sheep, you did not make the rabbits on which we live, you did not make the cows, or the horses, but you say, "These things are mine". This cannot be a truth. I make my axe, my pots, and these are mine. What I wear is mine. Some love was mine. Now it has gone. I think you are a good man, Mister Po-leess-maan but we see the turning of the times. Maybe a hundred or two hundred years ago there was in the world what people called "the wilderness", or "no man's land", or "wasteland", and we lived in such places, we are waste people. There was the troll race, the dwarf race, the human race, and I am sorry for the goblin race that we cannot run so fast.

Here is the short version of the Kool-Aid Fallacy: Cult … therefore Jim Jones … therefore mass suicide … therefore Kool-Aid. It’s astonishing how much of social media now revolves around simple word association sequences. Absolutely no thought goes into anything. No one ever delivers an actual argument. If they ever do attempt an argument, their punctuation, spelling, grammar, logic and general education are not up to the task, and soon dissolve into meaningless mush. But usually they just hurry on to the insults and ad hominem attacks, which is the part they love. Before long, the Kool-Aid fallacy is eagerly applied. Every argument should have a Dunning-Kruger quotient associated with it. Most people are 100% on the Dunning-Kruger scale. They imagine themselves geniuses, and geniuses dunces. As ever, they have inverted reality.

No one can tell you your artwork is worthless but you. And no one can tell you it has value but you. Will you get ridiculous trolls who write heinous, soul crushing reviews? Yes. You will. But you’ll also get readers who love your work and appreciate your efforts. Above all that, you’ll be achieving your dreams and sharing it with the world. And that’s what matters.

Don't let yourself be swayed by stupid internet trolls and men too up their own asses to recognize that an eighteen-year-old girl's looks and actions and love life have no bearing on her professional abilities. Don't be a martyr because the shit you've faced in the past has convinced you that you don't deserve better this time around. You deserve it all and you should let yourself go after it.

If you tell them, I will pay a social visit to your mother.” “That’s playing dirty,” Merrich said. “Perhaps, but you keep your patty-paws out of my love affairs.” “Got it. I’ll leave the Trieux Troll alone.” “Her name is Cinderella.” “Could you have said that and sounded anymore lovesick?” “Shut up. Let’s go eat.” “After you, lover-boy.” “I hope she slaps you in the face when she meets you,” Friedrich grumbled. “More

The next common narcissists are trolls, those who think they're entitled to shit on the hard work of everyone else, and that their vacuous, moronic opinions are beliefs should be inflicted on everyone else. These dead-eyed knuckle-draggers are extremely annoying and also immensely harmful. They can do a huge amount of damage to new and growing movements, and that's exactly what motivates them. They love wrecking things.

For me, pressure to lose weight from thin loved ones hurt more than even the harshest jibes from strangers or the cruelest internet trolls. It’s easy to disregard strangers: we know one another for only moments at a time. Few things sting like rejection from those we love most, or conditional love offered with the insistence that they just want to help. “I love you” doesn’t ring so true when it’s followed by “I just want to fix you.

This longing to commit a madness stays with us throughout our lives. Who has not, when standing with someone by an abyss or high up on a tower, had a sudden impulse to push the other over? And how is it that we hurt those we love although we know that remorse will follow? Our whole being is nothing but against the dark forces within ourselves. To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul. To write is to sit in judgement on oneself.

Kane would know. He’s smart.” I tapped the side of my head with my finger. Magnus wagged his tail. “Smart and sexy. Smexy. Kane is Smexy.” I giggled again. I could see why trolls loved this stuff. It was awesome. Grabbing the box, I slammed the safe shut. Oh, damn. I hadn’t put the Yliaster crystal back in the safe. I began to twiddle the safe’s dial. I had no idea what the code was. “It’s on the tongue of my tip,” I grumbled, glancing at Magnus.

He read The Lord of the Rings for what I'm estimating the millionth time, one of his greatest loves and greatest comforts since he'd first discovered it, back when he was nine and lost and lonely and his favorite librarian had said, Here, try this, and with one suggestion changed his life. Got through almost the whole trilogy, but then the line "and out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls" and he had to stop, his head and heart hurting too much.

I asked XMN if perhaps this is not the best way to spend one's time. I asked if it might be a symptom of a much deeper personal problem that he has failed to address. He thinks for a moment. "Yeah I'm sure that's part of it. Then again, I don't know if the problems I have can ever be fixed. I don't know how you go about being reborn into a family that loves you. I think I'm damaged permanently. And if that's the case, everyone else deserves the same fate.

Dancer Hauk and Darling Cruel—and yes, those were their real names, which showed that even loving parents could be sick and twisted—were joking with each other when he entered. “Hey, Cruel,” Hauk said snidely. “Check it … the man is without his guise. You think he wants to be found out or is he looking for a reason to kill the woman? What odds are you taking?” Darling snorted. “I’m not betting shit, troll. I already owe you two weeks’ pay. Anymore and I’ll be working only to pay you.

I spent a few hours with Mercedes. She was, on the surface, quite troll-like—a lover of jubilant online chaos. She told me about her favorite 4chan thread. It was started by "a guy who's genuinely in love with his dog, and his dog went in heat, and so he went around collecting samples and injecting them into his penis and he fucked his dog and got her pregnant and they're his puppies." Mercedes laughed. "That's the thread I told the FBI about when they asked me about 4chan, and some of the officers actually got up and left the room.

Paugh!" the troll scoffed. "Romance. Kissing and folly. Where's the story, where's the philosophy? I'm a troll, and even I can't rip a bodice. You should read real literature. The classics." He held up a book called Ye Olde Clubbe of Fisticuffs. "This is one of my favorites. It's all about, like, rejecting capitalism." He held up another, the spine as yet uncracked, called Alliance of Nincompoops. "Or this one, about a misunderstood genius. You should read it. I'd love to chat about what the true meaning of success is when we're living in a world that values looks instead of substance.

When we’re in line for food, Peter reaches for a brownie and I say, “Don’t--I brought cookies,” and he gets excited. “Can I have one now?” he asks. I pull my Tupperware out of my bag and Peter grabs one. “Let’s not share with anybody else,” he says. “Too late,” I say, because our friends have spotted us. Darrell is singing, “Her cookies bring all the boys to the yard,” as we walk up to the table. I set the Tupperware down on the table and the boys wrestle for it, snatching cookies and gobbling them up like trolls. Pammy manages to snag one and says, “Y’all are beasts.” Darrell throws his head back and makes a beastlike sound, and she giggles. “These are amazing,” Gabe groans, licking chocolate off his fingers. Modestly I say, “They’re all right. Good, but not amazing. Not perfect.” I break a piece off of Peter’s cookie. “They taste better fresh out of the oven.” “Will you please come over to my house and bake me cookies so I know what they taste like fresh out of the oven?” Gabe bites into another one and closes his eyes in ecstasy. Peter snags one. “Stop eating all my girlfriend’s cookies!” Even a year later, it still gives me a little thrill to hear him say “my girlfriend” and know that I’m her. “You’re gonna get a gut if you don’t quit with that shit,” Darrell says. Peter takes a bite of cookie and lifts up his shirt and pats his stomach. “Six-pack, baby.” “You’re a lucky girl, Large,” Gabe says. Darrell shakes his head. “Nah, Kavinsky’s the lucky one.” Peter catches my eye and winks, and my heart beats quicker. I have a feeling that when I’m Stormy’s age, these everyday moments will be what I remember: Peter’s head bent, biting into a chocolate chip cookie; the sun coming through the cafeteria window, bouncing off his brown hair; him looking at me.

Note to self Keep calm. Keep going. Keep human. Keep pushing. Keep yearning. Keep perfecting. Keep looking out the window. Keep focus. Keep free. Keep ignoring the trolls. Keep ignoring pop-up ads and pop-up thoughts. Keep risking ridicule. Keep curious. Keep hold of the truth. Keep loving. Keep allowing yourself the human privilege of mistakes. Keep a space that is you and put a fence around it. Keep reading. Keep writing. Keep your phone at arm’s length. Keep your head when all about you are losing theirs. Keep breathing. Keep inhaling life itself. Keep remembering where stress can lead.

September 10, 1965 Dear Francesca, Enclosed are two photographs. One is the shot I took of you in the pasture at sunrise. I hope you like it as much as I do. The other is of Roseman Bridge before I removed your note tacked to it. I sit here trolling the gray areas of my mind for every detail, every moment, of our time together. I ask myself over and over, “What happened to me in Madison County, Iowa?” And I struggle to bring it together. That’s why I wrote the little piece, “Falling from Dimension Z,” I have enclosed, as a way of trying to sift through my confusion. I look down the barrel of a lens, and you’re at the end of it. I begin work on an article, and I’m writing about you. I’m not even sure how I got back here from Iowa. Somehow the old truck brought me home, yet I barely remember the miles going by. A few weeks ago, I felt self-contained, reasonably content. Maybe not profoundly happy, maybe a little lonely, but at least content. All of that has changed. It’s clear to me now that I have been moving toward you and you toward me for a long time. Though neither of us was aware of the other before we met, there was a kind of mindless certainty humming blithely along beneath our ignorance that ensured we would come together. Like two solitary birds flying the great prairies by celestial reckoning, all of these years and lifetimes we have been moving toward one another. The road is a strange place. Shuffling along, I looked up and you were there walking across the grass toward my truck on an August day. In retrospect, it seems inevitable—it could not have been any other way—a case of what I call the high probability of the improbable. So here I am walking around with another person inside of me. Though I think I put it better the day we parted when I said there is a third person we have created from the two of us. And I am stalked now by that other entity. Somehow, we must see each other again. Any place, anytime. Call me if you ever need anything or simply want to see me. I’ll be there, pronto. Let me know if you can come out here sometime—anytime. I can arrange plane fare, if that’s a problem. I’m off to southeast India next week, but I’ll be back in late October. I Love You, Robert P. S., The photo project in Madison County turned out fine. Look for it in NG next year. Or tell me if you want me to send a copy of the issue when it’s published. Francesca Johnson set her brandy glass on the wide oak windowsill and stared at an eight-by-ten black-and-white photograph of herself.

O enchanted land of my childhood, a cultural petri dish from which regularly issues forth greatness. New Jersey, in case you didn't know it, has got beaches. And they're not all crawling with roid-raging trolls with reality shows. I grew up summering on those beaches and they are awesome. Jersey's got farmland, beautiful bedroom communities where that woman from "Real Housewives" who looks like Dr. Zaius does not live nor anyone like her. Even the refineries, the endless cloverleaves of turnpikes and expressway twisting and unknowable patterns over the wetlands that are to me somehow beautiful. To know Jersey is to love her.

I just want this complete stranger, whose life I know nothing about and who I have made no effort to get to know beyond this Twitter thread, to be healthy.” This is called health trolling or concern trolling, and it is just another sinister body shame tactic. Given that we can make no accurate assessment of any individual’s health based simply on their weight (or photo on social media), it is evident that such behavior is not really about the person’s health but more likely about the ways in which we expect other bodies to conform to our standards and beliefs about what a body should or should not look like. Equally damaging is our insistence that all bodies should be healthy. Health is not a state we owe the world. We are not less valuable, worthy, or loveable because we are not healthy.

Where do you get your confidence?” is a complex, dangerous question. First of all, if you are a thin person, please do not go around asking fat people where they got their confidence in the same tone you’d ask a shark how it learned to breathe air and manage an Orange Julius. As a woman, my body is scrutinized, policed, and treated as a public commodity. As a fat woman, my body is also lampooned, openly reviled, and associated with moral and intellectual failure. My body limits my job prospects, access to medical care and fair trials, and— the one thing Hollywood movies and Internet trolls most agree on— my ability to be loved. So the subtext, when a thin person asks a fat person, “Where do you get your confidence?” is, “You must be some sort of alien because if I looked like you, I would definitely throw myself into the sea.

One night, Abby, who knows I understand life best through metaphors, said this: “Glennon, I want us to think of our love as an island. On our island is you, me, the kids—and real love. The kind of love novels are written about and people spend lifetimes trying to find. The holy grail. The most precious thing. The thing. We have it. It’s still young and new, so we’re going to protect it. Imagine that we’ve surrounded our island with a moat filled with alligators. We will not lower the drawbridge to let anyone’s fear onto our island. On our island is only us and love. Leave anything else on the other side of the moat. Over there, it can’t hurt us. We’re here, happy on our island. Let them scream fear or hate, whatever. We can’t even hear it. Too much music. Only love in, babe.” Every time an internet troll, journalist, or fundamentalist minister shared self-righteous judgment, I’d smile and imagine his tomato-red face screaming on the other side of the moat, while Abby, the kids, and I kept dancing on our island. None of it could touch us.

Just above Tommy’s face were the Maiden and the Troll, two of his oldest wall people. The troll lived in a cave deep in the woods. He was big (Tommy knew the troll was even bigger than his daddy, and if the troll told his daddy to sit down and shut up, he would in a second), and he looked scary, with his little eyes and crooked teeth like fangs, but he had a secret. The secret was that he wasn’t scary at all. He liked to read, and play chess by mail with a gnome from over by the closet wall, and he never killed anything. The troll was a good troll, but everyone judged him by his looks. And that, Tommy knew, was a mean thing to do, though everyone did it. The maiden was very beautiful. Even more beautiful than Tommy’s mommy. She had long blonde hair that fell in heavy curls to her waist, and big blue eyes, and she always smiled even though her family was poor. She came into the woods near the troll’s cave to get water from a spring, for her family. The spring bubbled out of Tommy’s wall right next to where his hand lay when he was asleep. Sometimes she only came and filled her jug and left. But other times she would sit awhile, and sing songs of love lost, and sailing ships, and the kings and queens of Elfland. And the troll, so hideous and so kind, would listen to her soft voice from the shadows just inside the entrance of his cave, which sat just below the shelf where Tommy kept his favorite toys and books. Tommy felt bad for the troll. He loved the maiden who came to his spring, but she would never love him. He knew from listening to his parents and the stuff they watched on television when he was supposed to be asleep that beautiful people didn’t love ugly people. Ugly people were either to laugh at or to be frightened of. That was how the whole world worked. Tommy rolled over on his side, just a small seven year old boy in tan cargo shorts and a plain white T-shirt. He let his eyes drift over the bedroom wall, which was lumpy in some places and just gone in others. There was a part of the wall down near the floor where he could see the yellow light of the naked bulb down in the basement, and sometimes he wondered what might live down there. Nothing good, of that he was sure.

Ahmity reached out and created a ball of light in his hand sending it down past Jack and into the cave. He called out to Jack, “It will move as you command.” Jack frowned feeling a bit ridiculous talking to a ball of light and said, “Go three feet inside the cave and hover.” The ball floated quickly to the cave entrance and past the rushing water to hover just inside the cave entrance. “Move further in another 5 feet.” There was a large shadow to the right. “Move right 10 feet.” Jack commanded and the ball floated into a side tunnel and disappeared. Jack said, “Return to Ahmity.” The ball slowly accompanied Jack back up the cliff. When he reached the top Ahmity helped him up over the edge and waited for his report. Jack wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, “I could see a tunnel in the side of the cave about 10 feet inside the entrance. It’s large enough for the trolls pass through.” Ahmity shook his head and said, “If the trolls traveled back to the Netherworld from here then it’s possible the beasts escaped the same way.” Jack sighed and glanced back at the school then said, “Well there’s no way to know for sure unless we take a short trip down a black hole.” Coming soon--Vengeance's Fire

Soon, droves of children start to show up, keeping us rather busy. We start tallying up the number of Trolls, Batmans, Lego men, and princesses we see. The most popular costume? Batman and Superwoman with the fabrics and accessories varying from child to child. But my favorite so far is the girl who dressed as Little Debbie, but then again, I may be biased. “I think she might be my new favorite,” Emma says as a little girl dressed as a nurse walks away. “That’s because you’re a nurse, but you can’t play favorites,” I say, reminding Emma of the rules. She levels with me. “This coming from the guy whose favorite child was dressed as Little Debbie.” “Come on.” I lean back in my chair and motion to my head. “She had the rim of blue on her hat. That’s attention to detail.” “And good fucking parenting,” Tucker chimes in, and we clink our beer bottles together. Amelia chuckles next to me as Emma shakes her head. “Ridiculous. What about you, Amelia? What costume has been your favorite so far?” “Hmm, it’s been a tough competition. There has been some real winning costumes and some absolute piss-poor ones.” She shakes her head. “Just because you put a scarf around your neck and call yourself Jack Frost doesn’t mean you dressed up.” “Ugh, that costume was dumb.” “It shouldn’t be referred to as a costume, but that’s beside the point.” I like how much Amelia is getting into this little pretend competition. She’s a far cry from the girl who first came home earlier. I love that having Tucker and Emma over has given me more time with Amelia, getting to know the woman she is today, but also managed to put that beautiful smile back on her face. “So who takes the cake for you?” I ask, nudging her leg with mine. Smiling up at me, she says, “Hands down it’s the little boy who dressed as Dwight Schrute from The Office. I think I giggled for five minutes straight after he left. That costume was spot on.” “Oh shit, you’re right,” I reply as Emma and Tucker agree with me. “He even had the watch calculator.” “And the small nose Dwight always complains about.” Emma chuckles. “Yeah, he has to be the winner.” “Now, now, now, let’s not get too hasty. Little Debbie is still in the running,” Tucker points out. Amelia leans forward, seeming incredibly comfortable, and says, “There is no way Little Debbie beats Dwight. Sorry, dude.” The shocked look on Tucker’s face is comical. He’s just been put in his place and the old Amelia has returned. I fucking love it.

Teodor’s wife. They were planning to spend some of the summer in France, were they not?” France. Luca had studied in France. Cass had to stop thinking of Luca or she would go mad. She forced herself to concentrate on Madalena’s face. “Is that right?” she mustered. “I’ve heard France is lovely.” “Yes. She and her husband have been exploring Paris.” Mada smiled. “Her letter goes on and on about the Notre Dame cathedral. Apparently it has the most breathtaking stained-glass windows.” “Notre Dame,” Marco mused. “Have you seen it, Signore?” He turned to Madalena’s father. “I have, indeed,” Signor Rambaldo said. “A stunning piece of architecture. Though to be fair, Venice has her share of beautitful structures as well.” “Is it true,” Marco went on, “that there are catacombs beneath Notre Dame’s courtyard? Ruins of the original settlement built by the Celts?” “I have heard that. Crumbling walls, broken swords, perhaps some ghosts trolling the place looking for their bones.” Signor Rambaldo rubbed his beard thoughtfully. Madalena flung down her fork. “Both of you ought to be ashamed,” she cried out. “I’ve been trying to distract Cass from morbid thoughts, and you two turn a lovely conversation about Paris into a ghost story.

The guard can go to the Rialto and tell the rettori. The councilmen look into crimes such as this. They could send an avogadore to investigate.” Falco spun around to face her again. “Who is she? You don’t know. Who killed her? You don’t know. Even if the guard stopped drinking and playing dice long enough to row over to tell the rettori, I doubt the magistrate will be concerned. They only care about crimes that upset the merchants or that scare away tourists. They won’t care about a robbed tomb out here on San Domenico, or about the murder of an unknown courtesan.” “Maybe you’re afraid they’ll think you killed her.” Cass lifted her chin, forcing herself to meet Falco’s eyes, searching them for signs of evil. She saw none. And yet, there had to be a reason he was so opposed to reporting a murder. Falco folded his arms. “And what will they think about you, trolling the graveyard, unchaperoned, with a stranger? A commoner, no less. What will your parents say when the soldiers drag you home? Won’t they be shocked to find out what late-night company their lovely daughter has been keeping?” “My parents are dead,” Cass said simply. She didn’t say it to make him feel guilty. It just came out of her mouth instinctively. She’d probably said it a hundred times, so often that the words themselves felt dead to her, meaningless. Falco softened. “Your guardians, then. They won’t believe that we weren’t…” He trailed off. “It’ll be the talk of the city by daybreak.” He reached out and stroked her hair. “Fun thought, though, eh? A girl like you with me?” His soft touch made Cass warm and cold at the same time. He was right. Aunt Agnese would lock Cass inside the villa if she found out where Cass had spent the evening. And if she found out Cass was consorting with a commoner? Well, that would be very bad, possibly exiled-to-a-nunnery-in-Spain bad.

We actually build castles all the time, out of our jobs and our families and the things we've purchased. Sometimes we even make them out of each other. Some of these castles are impressive too. Lots of people come to admire what we've built over the course of our lives and tell us what great castles we have. But Jesus told His friends we weren't supposed to spend our lives building castles. He said He wanted us to build a kingdom, and there's a big difference between building a castle and building a kingdom. You see, castles have moats to keep creepy people out, but kingdoms have bridges to let everyone in. Castles have dungeons for people who have messed up, and kingdoms have grace. There's one last thing castles have–trolls. You've probably met a couple. I have too. Trolls aren't bad people; they're just people I don't really understand. Here's the deal: it's how we treat the trolls in our lives that will let us know how far along we are in our faith. It we want a kingdom, then we start the way grace did, by drawing a circle around everyone and saying they're in. Kingdoms are built from the people up. There's no set of plans-just Jesus.

the world would be a lot happier if love found people instead of people chasing it down by trolling bars or the Internet.

As a woman, my body is scrutinized, policed, and treated as a public commodity. As a fat woman, my body is also lampooned, openly reviled, and associated with moral and intellectual failure. My body limits my job prospects, access to medical care and fair trials, and—the one thing Hollywood movies and Internet trolls most agree on—my ability to be loved. So the subtext, when a thin person asks a fat person, “Where do you get your confidence?” is, “You must be some sort of alien because if I looked like you, I would definitely throw myself into the sea.” I’m not saying there’s no graceful way to commiserate about self-image and body hate across size-privilege lines—solidarity with other women is one of my drugs of choice—but please tread lightly. Second

Was it getting hot? Why was she flustered? Was he next going to ask how many bookshelves she had and how full they were? This was... Was she turned on by this? Wait, of course, she was. She was a bookworm. A book hoarder. A book dragon. A library troll. She was a bibliophile. And the man in front of her loved books as much as she did.

You need to get back to it.” “It doesn’t exactly pay the bills.” “Maybe. But you need to figure out how to love the life that you have, while you work on the life that you want. So you’ll find a job that pays the bills and sculpt at night. And on weekends.” She smiled. “That’ll keep you from trolling the internet and submitting fake real estate applications.

I’m planning a margarita chin-dick ring toss margarita party. Everyone welcome! Except Castro. Stay tuned on my IG for details: @brynne_weaver Now someone please help me find my next troll for Gumdrop the limp-dick unicorn. They seem to have gone into hiding and only the best troll will do… All my love, Bxxx

In short, the oft-repeated (and reported) assumption that trolls devoted most of their time to terrorizing real-life friends and family members was not borne out by my experience. While certain RIP trolls did indeed attack real-life loved ones, and denied feeling any remorse no matter how traumatizing their behaviors (“I just hate everyone,” Peter Partyvan once explained in a private message, his noncommittal shrug almost audible33), most of the trolls I worked with found “real” RIP trolling either uninteresting or downright distasteful

My only advice? Don’t feed the trolls and don’t read personal attacks... When in doubt, block. You don't "owe" anyone anything. Try to forget and move on. Don’t let fear prevent you from doing something you love.

The Devil loved watching children pour down the front steps of the high school like lava from a volcano. Trolling for souls. He posed in one of his favorite guises today, a school bus driver.

Parallel worlds, right?" Aston nodded. "Our sci-fi writers love 'em." "They still do back home," Ludmilla assured him.

Your father would cut off me beard if he knew how often ye slip away to commune with the forest! Do you not want poor Boojohni to find true love and happiness? What troll would have me without my beard?” He shuddered in horror. I tugged on it affectionately and started walking again.

Then there's those wizards on it, who must all be gifted hydrophobes-' 'You mean they hate water?' said Twoflower. 'No, that wouldn't work,' said Rincewind. 'Hate is an attracting force, just like love. They really loathe it, the very idea of it revolts them. A really good hydrophobe has to be trained on dehydrated water from birth. I mean, that costs a fortune in magic alone. But they make great weather magicians. Rain clouds just give up and go away.' 'It sounds terrible,' said the water troll behind them. 'And they all die young,' said Rincewind, ignoring him. 'They just can't live with themselves.

The whole time y’all were arguing, she was smiling. Something is up with that lil’ evil, troll ass lookin lil’ bitch.

Thursday, January 12, 2006 It’s been a long day. I’m in a hospital lobby, waiting for a friend whose loved one is hovering between life and death. Sitting here is giving me some time to reflect on some of the things I’ve learned today, and they aren’t pretty. What I want to do is speak to every parent with an adolescent or pre-adolescent child and say to those parents: WAKE UP!!! If your child has a computer, check it out. Find out what chat rooms he or she visits, and find out what’s going on there. Find out who’s on your child’s buddy list. Who sends e-mails to your child’s address and what do those e-mails say? And what does your child say back? Does this sound like an invasion of your precious offspring’s privacy? You bet it is. It’s also called parenting. The same rules apply to your child’s cell phone. What comes and goes on your son or daughter’s text messages is private. It’s also possibly deadly. Today I’ve caught glimpses of some of the people out there, evil people—who are trolling the cyber-ether for innocent children to victimize—your children. And yes, you should be very afraid for your children. And if looking over your son or daughter’s shoulder when they’re online annoys them? Fine. You can tell them from me that being a parent is a dirty job, but somebody has to do it. Babe, posted 6: 07 P.M. January 12, 2006

I could get in there with a total stranger and do the thirty-six questions and next thing you know I'm hopelessly smitten with some kind of, like, troll or something." "To the best of my knowledge, no trolls have applied." "Dumb question." He hasn't said that. She fiddled with the buttons on her overcoat, then sort of laughed. "Who am I kidding? The real problem would be if the troll didn't love me back.

On social media, you will be fighting someone who is nobody. Who is trying so hard to be somebody by fighting you? Most people are not sane or normal and some are lost, broken, angry, hungry, bitter, and jealous. Never experienced any love or attention. They have nothing they have worked for and nothing to lose. You should not entertain anyone and everything on Social Media.

The total amount of time spent posting comments online correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. This was especially true for those who relished “trolling,” the anonymous posting of negative and destructive comments. The participants who listed trolling as their favorite activity earned the highest scores on those unsavory psychological measures.

After all, what’s the alternative? Respond to every cavil, niggle, and jab? If you do that, you’ll lose sight of what you hoped to create in the first place, and you’ll only end up feeding the seagulls. Seagulls? Yes. Ryan and I refer to Internet critics not as trolls but as seagulls, because they fly in, crap on you and your work, and then fly away. And just like seagulls, they’re usually too simpleminded to understand the implications of their own actions.

Whatever the behavior—strawman debates, food policing, trauma voyeurism, “tough love,” or “motivation”—concern trolling relies on the logic and tactics of abuse. Concern trolling tells fat people that whatever befalls us is our fault and that no thin person can be held accountable for their own behavior when faced with the sight of a fat person’s body. It tells fat people that concern trolls wouldn’t have to hurt you if you didn’t make me. Concern trolling is the trojan horse of anti-fatness, seductively telling thinner people that everything they’re doing is for a fat person’s own good.

It’s just ached a bit, wondering if he would find that himself. Worse, he knew himself. He would fall in love with his troll bride. He would give her his heart for the simple reason that she was his wife, he would choose to love her, and his heart thus belonged to her.

At pretty much every blogging job I’ve ever had, I’ve been told (by male managers) that the reason is money. It would be a death sentence to moderate comments and block the IP addresses of chronic abusers, because it “shuts down discourse” and guts traffic. I’ve heard a lot of lectures about the importance of neutrality. Neutrality is inherently positive, I’m told—if we start banning trolls and shutting down harassment, we’ll all lose our jobs. But no one’s ever shown me any numbers that support that claim, that harassment equals jobs. Not that I think traffic should trump employee safety anyway, but I’d love for someone to prove to me that it’s more than just a cop-out.

When I started building my own wealth, when my business grew to six figures and then seven figures, when I paid off my debt . . . I felt ashamed. Sometimes that shame was internally induced: I would feel ashamed that I wasn’t struggling when so many others were, ashamed that being financially comfortable must mean I wasn’t donating enough. That internal shame was the result of our culture’s messaging about women with money, but the trolls that swarmed my social media mentions, making assumptions about my story, just reinforced that I was supposed to feel ashamed for having money.

The desire to make others wait is a desire for power. Similarly (to mention some other common patterns you may have), the desire to pick fights with your partner to get attention, the desire to troll people on social media, the desire to bad-mouth colleagues as a way of gaining leverage at work, are all sideways manifestations of a desire for power. This desire for power, this desire to have an impact on the world around you and to be significant, is an immensely normal, lovely, garden-variety human desire. The fact that you have it doesn't make you uniquely evil; it makes you just like the rest of us.

At the risk of seeming sad, writing is that important. It's how my thoughts form and how my emotions get less squidgy. I love writing. At least I love the idea of writing - writing that's meaningful to me. Sometimes I imagine a page cram-full of verve and zaz that constantly takes the pith. Sometimes it's a phone-text - but a phone-text that someone will be joyful to read. More than that, I want the idle drift and the splendorous spark. I want to take the moment slowly into prose. I want beauty, I want pathos, I want... I want my own stuff, if I'm honest, or I used to when I was young and innocent and was so less critical of my ideas.

This longing to commit a madness stays with us throughout our lives. Who has not, when standing with someone by an abyss or high up on a tower, had a sudden impulse to push the other over? And how is it that we hurt those we love although we know that remorse will follow? Our whole being is nothing but a fight against the dark forces within ourselves. To live is to war with trolls in heart and soul. To write is to sit in judgment on oneself. —Henrik Ibsen

Happiness, like love, is the choice to dwell on the deeper joy, deeper contentment. Some, like our dear Elspetha, are born with the ability to do this without a second thought. Some have to learn to do this through a lot of struggle. It is, after all, what Farrendel went to Escarland to learn.

I've always thought it was the loss of the little things that hurt the most when a friend dies. Having coffee with them or expecting to hear their voice when you go to work." The troll let out a sigh and crossed his paws over his belly. "When does the sadness go away?" "Son, that is a question without an answer. Grief is something we all want to avoid, but it's really the balm we need. It's there to help us remember what we love about the one we lost and to take it in even deeper. But how long it takes varies and it will probably come for a visit, and then leave for a while, only to return later to help open your heart again, just a little bit more." "I need to get on with things. I can't wait for grief to be done with me." The old man nodded his head. "Too true. Life goes marching forward all the time. That is another one of the blessings. We can put ourselves back into the flow of life and let it carry us for a while, like a river. We go about our day, we get things done and in the background, grief still talks to us, reminding us that we were loved, and therefore, we will be again.

You are the toxic one After looking through the window. Look into the mirror . Look through your cellphone. Is this you ? You have cut all ties with people who spoke bad about you. You know the danger of lies and rumors what it can do to a person. But on social media you follow all the accounts that speak bad of others. You follow and glorify all this toxic social media accounts. Mean, vile , miserable , psychopath , pathological liars . You are the first to laugh, comment and share their content. Its you who is spreading the toxic gospel, you even tagging others. Making remarks of not being judged by liking their content. Asking others if it is only you, who likes their content or there are others like you ? You have condition yourself to get excited every time , you hear bad news or bad things happening to others. Next step will be you opening fake or catfish account if you haven’t already. Bad traits have addiction,. Yours started by loving people secrets and downfall. The reason you follow those accounts is to feed your inner soul. It Is because you can relate. They are you and you are them. You share the same mentality, views, sentiments, resemblance, ideology, and character traits. You are justifying their wrong doings or sayings, because in you . There is nothing wrong they said or done. After looking through the window. Look into the mirror . How toxic you are . Look through your cellphone. How bad you have become. By just adding or following someone who is toxic.

Allegiances It is time for all the heroes to go home if they have any, time for all of us common ones to locate ourselves by the real things we live by. Far to the north, or indeed in any direction, strange mountains and creatures have always lurked– elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders:-we encounter them in dread and wonder, But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold, found some limit beyond the waterfall, a season changes, and we come back, changed but safe, quiet, grateful. Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills while strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears, we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love where we are, sturdy for common things.

Or, worse yet, when you meet a woman, and start something with her, the first woman you ever really loved; and then after a brief off-season you return to McMurdo an your reunion with her only to have her dump you on arrival as if your Kiwi idyll had never happened. Or when you see her around town soon after that, trolling with the best of tremor when you find out that some people are calling you "the sandwich," in reference to the ice women's old joke that bringing a boyfriend to Antarctica is like bringing a sandwich to a smorgasbord. No that's heartbreak for you.

Or, worse yet, when you meet a woman, and start something with her, the first woman you ever really loved; and then after a brief off-season you return to McMurdo an your reunion with her only to have her dump you on arrival as if your Kiwi idyll had never happened. Or when you see her around town soon after that, trolling with the best of them; or when you find out that some people are calling you 'the sandwich,' in reference to the ice women's old joke that bringing a boyfriend to Antarctica is like bringing a sandwich to a smorgasbord. Now that's heartbreak for you.

I also love ‘Mr. Fox’ and the advice that his bride-to-be sees carved above the door to his house: BE BOLD, BE BOLD. She goes inside, of course, and then she sees more advice: BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD. But she goes through that door, too. The next piece of advice is BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD, LEST THAT YOUR HEART’S BLOOD RUN COLD. I bet you can imagine what she does anyway.

Tell me the truth. Does my hair look like shit? It doesn’t, right? Gen’s just a heinous troll. Right?” I hesitate the tiniest of beats. “Right.

The fat acceptance movement as enough to worry about without concern trolls poking about.” -Shenita Etwaroo

Fly, Troll, if you are ready,” Greta said over and over. But Troll wasn’t in a hurry. “Stay, Troll, if you aren’t,” I began chanting. It was like picking petals off a flower to “she loves me, she loves me not,” and waiting to see which way it would come out. Then, suddenly, Troll spread his wing feathers wide apart and swooped off, just as Greta said, “Fly, Troll, if you are ready,” for about the twentieth time. We couldn’t hear his wings flap because owls fly silently. And we couldn’t see where he went. It was too dark. But about five minutes later, we heard his laughing sound, a kind of a garble of noise, running down the scale. “He’s saying good-bye and thank you to you girls,” Mr. Mallard said. “Oh, he is, he is,” Greta said, clapping her hands. “Oh, I’m so happy he’s free. Aren’t you glad, Lindsay?” I, definitely, was happy. All our hard work and worry had been worth it for those last minutes with him. I knew I would remember this night all my life. We didn’t release Troll a minute too soon. The next day the Fish and Game officer paid a surprise visit to the Mallards. I wasn’t there, but Greta told me that he searched the place from top to bottom and was mad he didn’t find anything. “Luckily, I had just raked up Troll’s castings,” Greta said. “Otherwise, he might have found them and looked up into the tree.” “Did he ask you what you had done with the animals? What did you say? Were you scared? Did he threaten to arrest you?” “It didn’t make any difference what he asked me. My dad told me to ‘take the Fifth’--in other words, to say nothing.” “I wish I had been there,” I said. Then I wondered--had those words actually come out of my mouth? Only a short time back, I had been scared witless by the state officer. Now I was ready to meet him head on! This was all so confusing that I put it out of my mind. In another two weeks, Nutkin would be ready for release. After that, if we got caught, we would only have the one charge against us of keeping Rocky Star. Meanwhile, we were saving lives. And nothing in the world could be more important than that!

We were poorer then, during the four decades before and after the second war, even though wealth lined some of the lanes, avenues, streets, and roads of TST. We came to TST because of that wealth and the men who haunted the district, trolling for love, gluttonous with desire. But we were happier then because any money is better than being impoverished. After all, we were young and pretty enough, smart and hungry enough, sad and desperate enough to go away and stay away in TST, far from the shanties or villages or homes of our birth. Those homes where love was absent and our desire for more translated into lust for a future that could be our own. We came in droves during war and peacetime, hunting out a perch to land on for what passed as a lifetime.

Of course, my dear,” said Oskar. “I’ll write of brave Nugget, whose bark shook the trees, Nugget, whose love for Leeli Wingfeather sent him flying to meet a troll twice his size, whose might shattered Miller’s Bridge and saved the Wingfeathers from a Fang horde.” Janner braced himself for more of Leeli’s tears, but she didn’t cry. She worked her way to her feet and rummaged around in her pack for her ancient whistleharp. “Mama, will you get my crutch? I want to see the ocean.” Leeli limped to the precipice above the bank and sat. She took a deep breath and looked out over the Dark Sea of Darkness with a smile. The sky in the east blushed at the coming darkness. Leeli brought the whistleharp to her lips and played.

It’s like whatever spell was keeping his noble-prince persona in place is melting away, layer by layer, and now I can see him for what he really is. First he morphs into a fairy tale villain, a sneering troll under a bridge. And then a sad little boy who isn’t doing anything with his life except drumming up drama, obeying his father’s toxic wishes, and bullying everyone “beneath” him so he can feel important.

In the next room, my son, stout but saggy-kneed, clings to the crib bars like a prisoner. Menthol steam from the vaporizer has made a ghost of him. His ringlets are plastered to his head, and coughs rack his small frame. The animal suffering that’s rattling him throws ice water on me, and I enjoy a surge of unalloyed love for him, followed by panic, followed by guilt. He sees me rushing toward him and abruptly drops his outstretched arms an instant to say, No pants? His head’s tilted with bald curiosity. Which cracks me up, and he laughs till the coughs start exploding through him again, by which point I’ve cleaved him to me, both of us sweating. His diaper’s sagging from the vaporizer’s work, but fresh steam is his lifeline. Carrying him to the bathroom, I crank on the shower. But before I change him, before I squirt the syrupy acetaminophen into his mouth, I haul him whooping down the stairs to the kitchen. I open the stove where a near empty bottle of Jack Daniels squats like the proverbial troll under the bridge. Needing neither glass nor ice, I press my lips to the cool mouth, and it blows into my lungs so I can keep on.