“Dead fields under a November sky, scattered rose petals brown and turning up at the edges, empty pools scummed with algae, rot, decomposition, dust... ”

“I am alone. Alone except for the sirens, alone except for the burning, empty city on the edge of a rotting, pollutedriver green with algae, host to rubber-skinned, gibbous-eyed things with mouths large enough to swallow me whole andprotruding stomachs ready to digest me.”

“And the marvellous rose became crimson, like the rose of the eastern sky. Crimson was the girdle of petals, and crimson as a ruby was the heart”

“The Fairy's dress rustled as she turned. Human women dressed like flowers, layers of petals around a mortal, rotting core.”

“I wasn’t expecting him to light candles or scatter rose petals. But I just made myself infertile for him, so the least he could’ve done was make the bed.”

“and all the beauty and the blasphemy. Petals, petals, scattering from the stands where only vestals were allowed to sit, having tended the flame for all of us. Here, I knew, was the empire of my soul showing on my face as I turned to you.”