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Quote by Haruki Murakami

“That’s my dream. It’s always the same. Always. Every little detail. And every time I have it, it’s just as scary as the last. (…) It’s so real, I feel as if I’ve already died hundreds of times.”

Quote by Haruki Murakami

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After the Quake

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Haruki Murakami

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“The worst of it is that while we continue to sink deeper into the muck and mire that we’ve created, in the very descent itself we ignorantly declare that in reality we are rising. And until desperation has crippled us sufficiently to confess the lie that we are lifting ourselves out of this mess, and until the panic of utter hopelessness has driven us to completely surrender all of the pathetic contrivances that we’ve fashioned that have put us there, we will never realize that God has readied solid ground that stands but a single step away”

“"Ry-Rylan?" Ivy's voice is faint. I crawl over to her side, my eyes never once straying from hers. "Rylan?" "I'm here," I whisper, stroking her forehead with tenderness. "I'm here, and I'm not leaving you." She grins weakly. The light in her eyes is starting to slowly fade. "Thank you. I wish I could say the same...for me." "Don't say that," I beg. "You're not going to die. I'll get some water, out the fire out, and everything will be fine—" Ivy places her hand on mine. "Water will not stop it. Once it starts, the fire will keep going. See how it spreads?" She's right. In these few moments the flames have spread up to her waist, licking her body with searing tongues. Something glows. Glancing down, I see Ivy healing my burned palms. Once she's done, she places her hand on my bloody shoulder and heals that too. "There," she murmurs, letting her hand drop. "You are all healed. My last gift to you." "You can't leave," I whisper, more to myself than anyone else. Tears prick my eyes. "You can't leave." "We all have to leave sometimes," Ivy muses, so calm in the face of death. "Even swamp angels."”

“When we were in New York, you cried for two days and passed out. You said a word in your sleep, over and over. Akinli.” Elizabeth stared down at the drawing. “At first I thought it was gibberish. And then I thought it was the name of a town or a building. . . . I didn’t figure out it belonged to a person until you made that.” Elizabeth pointed down to the paper, worn from being folded and unfolded who knew how many times. “When Elizabeth came to me, I had to tell her the truth, and we decided to find him. You gave us the name of the town. We went there looking for someone answering to that name, fitting this image.” Miaka smiled ruefully. “Very small town. It wasn’t hard.” Tears pooled in my eyes. “You’ve really seen him?” They both nodded. I thought about all those trips they had taken, making up ridiculous stories so they could get to him without me knowing. “How is he?” I asked, unable to contain my curiosity. “Is he okay? Has he gone back to school? Is he still with Ben and Julie? Is he happy? Could you tell? Is he happy?” The questions tumbled out without me being able to hold them in. I was desperate to know. I felt a single word would put my soul at ease. Elizabeth swallowed hard. “That’s the thing, Kahlen. We’re afraid he’s dying.”

“The survivor spoke to us though, or tried to. Mumbling through that matted brown beard of his, pale as death itself. I can’t say now if it was weakness from his wounds or what it was – but we struggled to understand him. In fact we got nothing intelligible from him at all then. He seemed afraid, like any dying man probably would be, but he did seem more terrified than any dying man I’ve seen before – and I’ve seen a few in my time. Let me tell you, Corsair or not, he grabbed whatever hand would hold his, and clenched it so tight his knuckles turned white! He kept fading out as we carried him on the stretcher board the medics brought with them. Looking back, I think he tried to warn us, poor bastard. He tried to tell us to leave him behind and go, but we wouldn’t listen. We thought we were better than the Corsairs, remember? We thought we would be all moral and upright and try to help him. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ were the last words he said before losing consciousness. At least, those that we could make out. At the end of it all, he was right – as it turned out, we couldn’t even help ourselves.”