" Look at the boy from Cambridge, Massachusetts, always too thin, now so tired he can barely move. He's uninjured, but that doesn't matter: he's still wounded. He holds the body of his sister, and if she's alive, it's only barely, survival measured by the thinnest of margins. His clothing is stained with her blood. His hands ache with splinters and with their own stillness, as if through motion he might have redeemed her and, by redeeming her, redeemed himself.
Look at the girl from Palo Alto, California, so motionless that it's clear how close she is to the transition from person to past. She is crumpled and cast-aside, exhausted from her own efforts to become something more than a consequence. The wound in her shoulder has crusted over; the bleeding has stopped. That doesn't matter. There was more than enough damage done to take her to the edge, and over, into what waits beyond. She is ready to return to the Up-and-Under via the graveyard path. When she goes, she knows she will not go alone. "
― Seanan McGuire , Middlegame (Alchemical Journeys, #1)