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1 " This cruel age has deflected me,like a river from this course.Strayed from its familiar shores,my changeling life has flowedinto a sister channel.How many spectacles I've missed:the curtain rising without me,and falling too. How many friendsI never had the chance to meet. "
― Anna Akhmatova , The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
2 " The woman rolled her eyes. “DarkRiver males are damn possessive and complete exhibitionists during the mating dance.”Sascha ran through her dictionary of changeling terminology and could find no fit. “Mating dance?”Mercy whistled. Dorian winced. Tamsyn suddenly got interested in her dough. Clay and Vaughn mysteriously disappeared. Behind her, Lucas’s body was a hard wall of heat. “I think we need to discuss this upstairs. "
― Nalini Singh , Slave to Sensation (Psy-Changeling, #1)
3 " Reinvention is my philosophy, if you want to call it that,” he says, looking out the window. “Imagination is the key to creating a life that is ever new.” Stanley turns his eyes to me. “We are each of us a changeling person,” he says. “We are not going to be the same decade after decade. Wisdom results from confronting not only one’s desires and capacities but also one’s limitations.” “The Layers,” one of Stanley’s best-loved poems, is his crystallization of this wisdom. I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I was, though some principle of being abides from which I struggle not to stray. When I look behind, as I am compelled to look before I can gather strength to proceed on my journey, I see the milestones dwindling toward the horizon and the slow fires trailing from the abandoned camp-sites, over which scavenger angels wheel on heavy wings. Oh, I have made myself a tribe out of my true affections, and my tribe is scattered! How shall the heart be reconciled to its feast of losses? In a rising wind the manic dust of my friends, those who fell along the way, bitterly stings my face. Yet I turn, I turn, exulting somewhat, with my will intact to go wherever I need to go, and every stone on the road is precious to me. In my darkest night, when the moon was covered and I roamed through wreckage, a nimbus-clouded voice directed me: “Live in the layers, not on the litter.” Though I lack the art to decipher it, no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written. I am not done with my changes. "
4 " Protect me from the fairies wild, Or exchange thee for a stolen child. A debt be paid more than a few, Tempting hunger with fairy stew. A mother’s distraction used as bait, To steal unchristen babes in wait. Malevolent fairies will deceive, Of lower nature and unbelief. An act to reflect the human soul, Will light the darkness of shadow. By living life of higher mind, A changeling thee will never find. In thy cradle a bundle of love, Your child protected by God above." Changelings, Meet the Little People...An Enchanting Adventure "
5 " There passed a child of four, a small girl on a footpath over the fields, going home in the evening to Erl. They looked at each other with round eyes." Hullo," said the child." Hullo, child of men," said the troll.. . . " What are you?" said the child." A troll of Elfland," answered the troll. " So I thought," said the child." Where are you going, child of men?" the troll asked." To the houses," the child replied." We don't want to go there," said the troll." N-no," said the child." Come to Elfland," the troll said.The child thought for a while. Other children had gone, and the elves always sent a changeling in their place, so that nobody quite missed them and nobody really knew. She thought awhile of the wonder and wildness of Elfland, and then of her own house." N-no," said the child." Why not?" said the troll." Mother made a jam roll this morning," said the child. And she walked on gravely home. Had it not been for that chance jam roll she had gone to Elfland." Jam!" said the troll contemptuously and thought of the tarns of Elfland, the great lily-leaves lying flat upon their solemn waters, the huge blue lilies towering into the elf-light above the green deep tarns: for jam this child had forsaken them! "
6 " He was still so very young. Faeries—true faeries, not their changeling throwaways—live forever, and when you have an eternity of adulthood ahead of you, you linger over childhood. You tend it and keep it close to your heart, because once it ends, it’s over. Quentin was barely fifteen. He’d never seen the Great Hunt that came down every twenty-one years, or been present for the crowning of a King or Queen of Cats, or announced his maturity before the throne of High King Aethlin. He was a child, and he should have had decades left to play; a century of games and joy and edging cautiously toward adulthood.But he didn’t. I could see his childhood dying in his eyes as he looked at me, silently begging me to answer for him. "
― Seanan McGuire , An Artificial Night (October Daye, #3)
7 " Travis ignored her protests as he pulled his cell phone from his pocket, thankful anew for that little Changeling quirk that allowed him to retain his clothes and everything that was within his aura each time he shifted. Christ, if life was like the movies, he’d end up naked and penniless every damn time he ran as a wolf. No wonder Hollywood werewolves were insane with rage. Probably pissed off at the sheer inconvenience of their lives. "
― Dani Harper , First Bite (Dark Wolf, #1)
8 " Once— and most of the night definitely counts as once—you can write off as a mistake. But you do this again and he's going to start thinking he has rights over you.” She knew predatory changeling men. They liked control. They particularly liked their women to submit. And Riley was one big giant hunk of testosterone-fueled Neanderthal wolf—he probably thought her submission was his right. She snorted. “Not in this lifetime. "
― Nalini Singh , Branded by Fire (Psy-Changeling, #6)
9 " She watched as he settled down on the bed with Naya skin to skin on his chest. His hand all but covered her tiny body as he stroked her in that changeling way, bonding with her on the most elemental level. Then he purred, and Naya made a happy little sound of delight, very much a cat in her love of touch. "
― Nalini Singh , Kiss of Snow (Psy-Changeling, #10)