...you could feel the chill creeping along the ground as though breathed out faintly by some distant giant...

I could feel it on my side, a shimmer of colder wind trying to press against me and pierce through to my skin, but I didn't care. I was colder inside than out.

I liked to feel their eyes on me, weighing me like a purse, and being able to hold my head up when they did it, feeling my own worth.

#wondrouswednesday @Eggs
1) People who are rude/ungrateful!
2) For my 21st, my boyfriend collated lots of photos of me and him and my friends and put them in this beautiful little book alongside lovely messages written by everyone for me. Made me cry!
3) Someone who achieves security within, and remains true to, themselves no matter what the circumstance. Difficult but so admirable!
4) Anyone who sees this should do it and tag me so I can read!

His lantern was swinging inside the house, making eyes of the windows, looking for me.

Cn: death

Da always buried the babies there even though the ground was hard to dig, because he didn't want to spare planting ground.

No one had ever shouted at me in my life: my mother with her quiet voice, my gentle father. But I found something bitter inside myself, something of that winter blown into my heart: the sound of my mother coughing, and the memory of the story the way they'd told it in the village square so many times, about a girl who made herself a queen with someone else's gold, and never paid her debts.

When my mother spoke, I inhaled all the warmth of that memory with her words, and longed for it with my cold hands curled into painful knots. I thought of going there to stay, a beggar girl, leaving my father alone and my mother's gold forever in our neighbours' houses.

The real story isn't half as pretty as the one you've heard.

FINALLY finished the first book I've read since finals and it may have taken me 20 years but I really liked it! Unlike anything I've read before and not something I'd usually pick up...but well worth the read💖 Thanks @Emilymdxn !💖💖💖

'Her hair was as sleek as it always was, and her dress as beautiful, but there was something about her that seemed wild, as if an invisible wind whipped around her'.

'Her face was like quicksilver, always racing to something new'.

'Her voice was bright and almost childishly loud, startling after the dullness of the hall. She had a tipped-up nose, and a sharp face, like a fox. She was pretty, and knew it'.

'“What are you thinking about?“ [...] “Nothing“, I said. It was untrue. I guess it always is'.

'To a goddess the few decades of human life were barely even an inconvenience'.

'Her black hair was loose down her back and her skin shone luminous and impossibly pale, as if it drank light from the moon'.

'Gods and mortals never mixed happily in our stories'.

'But is it not a sort of genius to cut always to the heart?'

'The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons'.

'I had been dreaming myself a fish, silvered by sun as it leaped from the sea. The waves dissolved, became amphorae and grain sacks again'.

'Rumours were the only coin the boys had to trade in'.

'I could have told him more, of the dreams that left me bleary and bloodshot, the almost-screams that scraped my throat as I swallowed them down. The way the stars turned and turned through the night above my unsleeping eyes'.

'Juggling was a trick of low mummers and beggars, but he made it something else, a living pattern painted on the air'

'The keen edge of my envy was like flint, a spark away from fire'.

tw: graphic imagery, death

'Sometimes he turned and showed the hole in his head, where the soft mass of his brain hung loose'.

My college library is still accessible for me until term finishes and I've found some really great books to read there!! I'm excited! Emily has recommended that I also read Johnson's Fen so I'm going to give that a go too hopefully.😊
(sorry for the blurry photo - idk why it's posted like that!)

#thursdaysurvey @laurenslibrary

1) Hmmm, this was technically the end of last year but I LOVED H is for Hawk - it's beautiful
2) I haven't read enough books this year to have a least fave! (Damn you finals revision)
3) The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern (loved The Night Circus)
4) I've set myself the goal of reading AS MUCH FOR FUN AS POSSIBLE for the rest of the year now I'm done w finals!!
5) everyone who follows me!! Tag me if you do it!🙌

'In order to lay down firm foundations for change it is necessary both to understand the framework you wish to change and to be kind to yourself' - Stepping Away from the Past

#wondrouswednesday @Eggs

1) My family sometimes call me doodles/molldoodles (I think bc i LOVED The Tweenies when I was little), my grandpa calls me little treasure, and most people call me Moll
2) hmm, the only one that comes to mind is Glubbslyme, that's kinda weird
3) I don't think so!
4) I LOVE a good book cover but if a book doesn't have a good'un it won't stop me reading it, so I guess it's just a bonus
5) @Emilymdxn !!😊

#weekendreads @rachelsbrittain
1) The Song of Achilles mainly! I'm enjoying it out in the sun and it's so nice to be reading just for fun again😊
2) I really want to read more by Naomi Novik!!
3) Hmm, I think it was A Clockwork Orange!
4) Naomi Novik's 'Uprooted' (she's a fave, can you tell haha)

#wondrouswednesday
1) Fantasy or magical realism
2) I'm terrible at thinking up stuff like this but it would have to be one word, idk why it just would haha. Think, like, 'Uprooted' by Naomi Novik
3) Me and 2 friends after our final exam!! We'd just been trashed (a weird oxford tradition where your friends come and cover you in shaving foam and whatnot to help you celebrate finishing)
4) I was just revising for my exams so sadly not many at all!

Started reading for fun again after finals! I like to read a fiction and a non-fiction at the same time so starting with a book that @Emilymdxn got me and a self-help type one🙌 Reading in a lush bath😊