Listen, listen, listen well. There was an age before the Seasons, when life and Earth, its father, thrived alike. (Life had a mother, too. Something terrible happened to Her.) Earth our father knew He would need clever life, so He used the Seasons to shape us out of animals: clever hands for making things and clever minds for solving problems and clever tongues for working together and clever sessapinae to warn us of danger. The people became what Father Earth needed, and then more than He needed. Then we turned on Him, and He has burned with hatred for us ever since.
Remember, remember, what I tell.
—Lorist recitation, “The Making of the Three Peoples,” part one

“I don’t want you to fix it,” Alabaster says. “It was collateral damage, but Yumenes got what it deserved. No, what I want you to do, my Damaya, my Syenite, my Essun, is make it worse.”
You stare at him, speechless. Then he leans forward. That this is painful for him is obvious; you hear the creak and stretch of his flesh, and a faint crack as some piece of stone somewhere on him fissures. But when he is close enough, he grins again, and suddenly it hits you. Evil, eating, Earth. He’s not crazy at all, and he never has been.
“Tell me,” he says, “have you ever heard of something called a moon?”

Deer gods, this gave me chills again, even though I knew what was coming, even though I know the reason for the breaking of the Earth and why Father Earth hates His children.

So fucking good 🔥

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(comment on The Fifth Season)