The sea was a big, grinding, unchangeable machine. The only terrible part was an awful longing to let her head go below the surface, to lose all buoyancy and lie at the bottom like a flat fish. Nona didn’t want to die, but she wanted to sit in the water and drowse, which she was forced to admit was the same thing eventually.

Don’t worry, kiddie, she said tiredly. I’ll keep loving you—my problem is I don’t know how to stop.

Kiriona turned her body to look at them. Nona couldn’t quite believe that they couldn’t all see it; but they weren’t watching, goggle-eyed, they hadn’t even seemed to notice. It was in Kiriona’s every movement—the bright, swift flexions of her arms, and the way she swung her legs, big and brash, and the weirdly easy, light grace with which she moved her dead body. Nona had never seen anyone so sad in her whole short life. It made her nearly afraid to die.

Cam told her that her main job was to be a Distraction. Nona asked if Harrowhark Nonagesimus had been a Distraction in life, and Cam said it was always the quiet ones.

She wanted to shout. She wanted to be listened to. She wished the barrier had taken her hands. She wished she had thrust herself into it–become that big seething mass of flesh and meat and tendrils–ruined her body, just melted it; come back messed up, so that nobody could want her body but her, so that it would be hers and nobody else’s.

Who was Pyrrha going to tell ass jokes to? Nona didn’t know; all of a sudden she felt sad and responsible that nobody was there to listen to Pyrrha’s ass jokes.

She was beginning to feel like a floating balloon on a string, with a weight tied to the end—the balloon bobbing, the weight dragging behind. She was the balloon, and also the string, but she wasn’t sure she was still the weight.

"It would have been my favourite present except for the handkerchief,” said Nona breathlessly. “I’m going to go back and fetch it. I’ll remember. I’ll make myself remember. And I’ll wear it all the time, inside the house and outside the house, and then you’ll know it’s really me. I’m not going to be gone forever…I’m ready. Im ready. Let’s go.

We didn’t even do it right…we were children—playing with the reflections of stars in a pool of water…thinking it was space.