“So some rich guy says it’s better to have something and lose it.Lesson learned.”I stood up.
Mom’s lips pursed.
I sat back down.“Just spit out the rest, then.”
“Lord Tennyson had a best friend,” she says.“His name was Arthur Hallum, and he died when he was still quite young.Tennyson wrote this for him—one of the most epic lines of poetry ever written.”
“You’re quoting gay poetry to me so I’ll eat ice cream?”I wasn’t impressed.“I’m upset aboutbingsu, Mom.It’s very inclusive of you, though.”
Mom’s hands clenched into fists.“Elizabeth Chadwick.”She breathed in through her nose, and out through her mouth.“Alfred’s friend was engaged to his sister.The poet himself, Lord Tennyson, was married for forty-two years and had two children.”
“He could totally still be gay,” I said.
“Stop teenagering all over the place and listen.”Mom sat across from me.“It’s better to love and lose than never to love at all.”She tilted her head.“You had the best ice cream in the world.”Her half-smile was kind.“I know how much you loved it, but don’t let losing it break you forever.You knew perfection, but you can still appreciate stuff that’s pretty good.”
“Mom.”
“And youshouldappreciate that you found it, but you should also move on and love again,” Mom said.“Even imperfectly.Because the alternative’s giving up—and that’s the same as never loving at all.”
I wasn’t at all convinced that was Tennyson’s point.
I did think about that quote sometimes, usually whenever someone tried to make me eat ice cream.I didn’t eat any that day, and I didn’t eat any for several more years.I still don’t love it.
I knew perfection.
Everything else tasted like disappointment.
But I was never quite sure Mom’s interpretation was right.I always sort of thought Tennyson was saying that he would rather have loved, even knowing it would be short-lived.I thought he must have lived on the memory of that love.I don’t think he ever tried toreplaceit with something less.
Maybe that’s why he married a woman.Who knows?
Or maybe he just never found another friend quite as amazing as that Arthur guy.But when I fly out of the lava, and Axel looks at me with blank, impassive eyes?
It’s pain like I’ve never felt before.
I decide then and there that Alfred, Lord Tennyson, is a complete and utter moron.
1
Liz
If I had to fight my way out of a hostage situation, I could.
Probably.
I mean, I might lose an eye or something, but I bet I’d survive.
But if I was being held and tortured for information?I’m pretty sure I’d crack.I like to talk—always have.
So when Azar snatches me out of the air—still straight up can’t believe I can fly—and shows me just how much better he can fly than me, I want to just tell him everything that just happened in the volcano.
One thing keeps me from doing it.
When he first bonded me, what feels like aeons ago, I had almost no leverage at all.He was adragon, and I was a puny human digging through the trash for a broken umbrella to use as a weapon.I’ve gotten stronger, but so has he.
Now he’s a nearly-invincible dragon who can take not one, buttwoterrifying forms.He can breathe fire, and he can transform the very earth around us.A few weeks ago, that wouldn’t have worried me in the slightest, because I knew he would never hurt me.
But now?
