13
" The view was, to say the least, incredible. And the feeling of it all - of being so small and insignificant - was a lot like the feeling I got when Burn and I would stand on the cliff in the mornings and watch the sun kiss the world awake.
I felt...unimportant. I felt light, and airy, and free. I felt like nothing mattered - not my grades, not my college future, not my awful spying on the Blackthorns - nothing. I'd done nothing wrong up here. I had no responsibilities up here - not to Dad, not to Mom, not even to myself. For a few minutes, I felt untouchable.
Nothing could get me in the sky, not even my problems. I watched the sun as I fell. So what, I thought, if Mom and Dad divorced? Would it really be the end of the world? This was the world - this huge thing below me, reduced to nothing more than toy-like dioramas of forests and towns. There were a hundred million problems waiting for me when I landed, but when you got high enough, all those problems seemed so small and insignificant. The sun didn't care about divorce. The sky didn't care about grades. No one cared, except me and the people in the below-world. I wasn’t a scholarshipper up here; I wasn’t a teacher’s pet, a wannabe psychologist, a girl who left her friends behind, or an attempted good-daughter. I
was just…me. "
― Sara Wolf , Burn Before Reading
20
" Stop it!" I flail my arms between them. "Both of you. Lucien, this is Yorl. Yorl, this is Prince Lucien."
Yorl freezes as Lucien narrows his eyes further at him. "Your Highness? In that gaudy getup?" He pauses, looking down. "With pants that tight?"
"It's better than no pants at all," Lucien snarls. Yorl shifts in his robe, his barely formed hackles raising straight off his neck in a golden ridge.
"I'm not a naked ape," Yorl fires back, "who needs them to begin with!"
The competitive pride is so thick I can practically smell it. People are staring. I clap my hands as loud as I can, like I'm trying to break up a feral-dog fight. "
― Sara Wolf , Find Me Their Bones (Bring Me Their Hearts, #2)