I was sitting on the couch in the living room, pouring through an old sci-fi novel I’d found in one of the ruins, and I could hear the water bubbling as he cooked. The spaghetti smelled good, but I knew he’d probably put something crazy in it like popcorn or marshmallows, so I ignored my rumbling belly.

— Ash Gray

Kim aria smirked and placed her hands behind her back. “Come now. It doesn’t have to come to that. Violence is so beneath us.” “No, it isn’t,” said Perianths at once.”Well. . . It is beneath me,” the high queen said and touched a hand to her chest. “Unlike you, I am civilized. I wear shoes and I have a last name.” They watched as she eased into a chair. She crossed one leg over the other, folded her arms, and regarded them calmly. “Aren’t you the least bit curious as to how I snatched the famed Nineveh Atari from our dark past? You can’t be that boring.

— Ash Gray

Maria refused to believe that human decency should be a privilege given only to a small few, and when she complained to her mother that she did not want to be a broodmare for the sake of alliances between the villages, her mother slapped her and sent her to the fields to pick Mesabi beans

— Ash Gray

My child will bear those scars forever,” Till said angrily. “And if he isn’t a fool, perhaps your child will learn from them,” Referred returned calmly.

— Ash Gray

My people have known of your people for thousands of years,” went on the alien, looking at me with those black eyes that glittered like the night sky. “We have watched you and studied you and never did we attempt contact. Why? Because we would be treated with the same hatred and violence you have shown your own people – that is, until we had properly assimilated into the sprawling patchwork quilt of your culture. To your people, ‘same’ has always meant good and ‘different’ has always meant evil. . . . Can you really blame my people for maintaining a safe distance?”“But thousands – millions drowned!” I insisted.

— Ash Gray

Narmada had never believed in unicorns, not until a stroll through the forests of Kenneth DOL convinced her otherwise. She was a young human woman living in a world where magic was dead and magical creatures a myth. Elves and FAE and magical beasts had long ago shed their skin and left their bones. It was a world where humans alone now existed, walking in the dark of night, always looking over their shoulder for their inevitable extinction, as if nature were waiting to absorb them next back into her soil.

— Ash Gray

No, : Ware ska said at once, :we should go back.: She heard the horse laugh softly into her mind. Ware ska, : he said in amusement, :it is not like you to ever look back.::I look back when sense dictates.::It is hard for horses to look back. We don’t really have shoulders. I guess we look back over our butt?:

— Ash Gray

Organic snorted and didn’t lower her weapon. “One girl can cause Alta trouble, Hard. You and I are proof that.

— Ash Gray

Perianths snorted. “Loren is like his mother: he will only change as the face of a rock changes. But. . . I think he missed you.

— Ash Gray

Quinn dropped her hand and avoided Thales’s eye. “I. . . I don’t want to kill you,” she said to the floor. “Not if I could save you.” The woman smiled gently at Quinn, her lips curling behind her oxygen mask. “I will not really die,” she said, drawing Quinn’s surprised gaze. She looked at Quinn contently a moment and went on, “Do you know how worlds are born? From the first breath of a star. We are made of starlight. We can not bear to look into the sun, into the thing that birthed us, any more than we can bear to look upon our parents in the throes of passion. It is our point of origin, and to it, we all must return.

— Ash Gray