Wheeling Gull Isle treibloka

I cannot hear him, he admitted through a wan grin. I have never heard him speak to me. At this, sharp self-loathing thrilled through him like sparks off of a welder's torch. He shirked judgement as well as praise. He wished to go unnoticed at the margins of the world because he was ashamed, and ashamed of the very shame.

He had been drawn to a military lifestyle because the arbiters of right and wrong were simply whoever stood above you in the ladder. There was no god but your commandant.

At times he would lay in the dark and listen to his comrades saying prayers before sleep. Their voices came to him as if through a homemade radio, different cadences, languages, frequencies, religions, all blurring into white noise.

How did people like Heda stand to remain in light without fear of catching flame?

Her face was childlike. The peace it displayed was something that he wanted but knew that would never belong to him. so he viewed it with awe and the absinthe-tinge of envy, and then denial of that envy.

He felt as if his whole life had been spent trawling through an oil slick, but there would be nothing cleansing about his immolation. But he speaks to you, he said, after a spell. I am glad for that.