What frightens you?(Excerpt from A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray)
What makes the hair on your arms rise, your palms sweat, the breath catch in your chest like a wild thing caged?
Is it the dark? A fleeting memory of a bedtime story, ghosts and goblins and witches hiding in the shadows? Is it the way the wind picks up just before a storm, the hint of wet in the air that makes you want to scurry home to the safety of your fire?
Or is it something deeper, something much more frightening, a monster deep inside that you've glimpsed only in pieces, the vast unknown of your own soul where secrets gather with a terrible power, the dark inside?
If you will listen, I will tell you a story -- one whose ghosts cannot be banished by the comfort of a roaring fire. I will tell you the story of how we found ourselves in a realm where dreams are formed, destiny is chosen, and magic is as real as your handprint in snow. I will tell you how we unlocked the Pandora's box of ourselves, tasted freedom, stained our souls with blood and choice, and unleashed a horror on the world that destroyed its dearest Order. These pages are a confession of all that has led to this cold, gray dawn. What will be now, I cannot say.
Is your heart beating faster?
Do the clouds seem to be gathering on the horizon?
Does the skin on your neck feel stretched tight, waiting for a kiss you both fear and need?
Will you be scared?
Will you know the truth?Mary Dowd, April 7, 1871
Today's favorite articles:
White Hot Truth -- What Would Love Do?
Serene Journey -- Life Sucks and Then You Choose
Raptitude -- How to Always Have Something Better to Talk About Than the Weather
Marc and Angel Hack Life -- What Money Can't Buy
Positively Present -- Solitary and Social: 10 Reasons to be Both
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