Of all silences I had encountered this was the gravest and most inevitable: not the silence of secrets, but of knowing.

I would like to think she turns around and goes home and does one thing differently that day because of what she has imagined, and again the day after that, and the day after that.

Silence is not empty or immaterial, and it is not needed to chain tame things. It often guards powers strong enough to shatter everything.

But water doesn’t care for human sorrows. It flows without slowing or quickening its pace in the darkness of the earth, where only stones will hear.

The world will not spin slower or faster when we have passed through the gate together. What remains is light on water, or a shifting shadow.

Water is the most versatile of all elements. It isn’t afraid to burn in fire or fade into the sky, it doesn’t hesitate to shatter against sharp rocks in rainfall or drown into the dark...