“Her seven-year-old self had decided that stealing books was morally bankrupt, but since the books hadn’t actually left the library—they’d merely been relocated—it wasn’t technically stealing. Echo looked around at her sea of tomes, and a single word came to mind: Tsundoku. It was the Japanese word for letting books pile up without reading them all.”

“Ala!" Echo sprang to her feet, legs tangled in the sheets. The Ala was here. The Ala had brought food. The Ala was a goddess”

“Greatness is not always good.”

“But the only thing worse than remembering the feel of Rose in his arms, the softness of her black and white feathers, the sound of her voice when she sang quietly to herself, would be forgetting it.”

“Her seven-year-old self had decided that stealing books was morally bankrupt, but since the books hadn’t actually left the library—they’d merely been relocated—it wasn’t technically stealing. Echo looked around at her sea of tomes, and a single word came to mind: Tsundoku. It was the Japanese word for letting books pile up without reading them all.”

“Humans make art to remember and be remembered,” said Caius. “Art is their weapon against forgetting.”