“And we will cause it to be well-made, this Sacrifice. You, young and never loving; I, old and never loved. Such a Song the Sea will never have seen.”

“Footsteps in the snowsuggest where you have been,point to where you were going:but when they suddenly vanish,never dismiss the possibilityof flight...”

“Must I accept the barren Gift?-learn death, and lose my Mastery?Then let them know whose blood and breathwill take the Gift and set them free:whose is the voice and whose the mindto set at naught the well-sung Game-when finned Finality arrivesand calls me by my secret Name.Not old enough to love as yet,but old enough to die, indeed--the death-fear bites my throat and heart,fanged cousin to the Pale One's breed.But past the fear lies life for all-perhaps for me: and, past my dread,past loss of Mastery and life,the Sea shall yet give up Her dead!Lone Power, I accept your Gift!Freely I make death a part of me;By my accept it is boundinto the lives of all the Sea-yet what I do now binds to ita gift I feel of equal worth:I take Death with me, out of Time,and make of it a path, a birth!Let the teeth come! As they tear me,they tear Your ancient hate for aye--so rage, proud Power! Fail again,and see my blood teach Death to die!”

“Honey, have you seen your sister?”She’s on Jupiter, Mom.”

“Blood in the water I sing, and one who shed it: deadliest hunger I sing, and one who fed it- weaving the ancient-most tale of the Sea's sending: singing the tragedy, singing the joy unending This is our shame- this is the whole Ocean's glory: this is the Song of the Twelve. Hark to the story! Hearken, and bring it to pass: swift lest the sorrow long ago laid to it's rest devour us tomarrow! ”

“A legend can just as well be founded in the future as in the past.""It's called a 'prophecy,'" Urruah said. "You may have heard of the concept.”

“Except when the freedom is one you don't choose to grant," Memeki said, more loudly this time. She was shaking herself all over, struggling to stand stright again. "You hold our hope with one claw and take it away with her other! I may be weak and doomed soon to die, but I will die as an I, not just one more nameless scarp of shell to be thrown out into the sucking mud! No matter how little a time it lasts, I will be what all these are" -she looked around at Kit and Ponch and Nita and the others-"selves unto themselves and being what matters to each other! Such a life, even a breath's worth of it, is better than anything you've ever given me!" Memeki was trembling again, but with passion with determinatin, desperate and doomed. She took a stem toward the dias, and another, her claw lifted not in that old gesture of submission, but in one more like a warrior's threat. "I will be what the Voice said I was, the Hesper I will be the Aeon of Light, the Power that made a different choice from yours. I will be the Star that did not fall, no matter how little a time the light lasts!”