I alternate between thinking of the planet as home – dear and familiar stone hearth and garden – and as a hard land of exile in which we are all sojourners.

This thing I am feeling, I’m almost certain, is the closest I’ll ever come to standing somewhere in between truth and reconciliation.

You view the gods as entities without,” Montolio tried to explain. “You see them as physical beings trying to control our actions for their own ends, and thus you, in your stubborn independance, reject them....