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Something Fabulous
by Alexis Hall

“”I’ve just…” began Valentine helplessly. “That is…everyone else has always seemed so… content and unquestioning.”

Bonny gave one of his little head tilts. “Unquestioning about what?”

“How they should be or what they should do or who they should love. I suppose I assumed that…lacking such certainty was an oddity. Perhaps even a weakness.”

“In my admittedly tragically limited experience,” said Bonny gently, “very few people are as certain as they pretend to be.”” (p. 76)

“”You are aware,” Valentine told him, “that there exists a midpoint between forever and never, everything and nothing?”

“Moderation, Valentine, should only be taken in moderation.”” (p. 217)

“It was an odd kind of torment, hacing him so close, and yet being unable to touch him.

So he looked instead. And glut himself on looking.

Remembered the sycamore tree, and the stars, and thought Bonny more beautiful than either.

Proof, if anything, of the watchmaker. That a being of such intricacy and delight - of such strength and vulnerability, and so many infuriating contradictions - could exist at all was a marvel far beyond the vagaries of happenstance.

But no. Bonny had made himself: from books and stories, and hopes and dreams. As Valentine had made himself from duty and fear and mistrust and ignorance.

“What have I been without you,” he whispered. “What would I have become?”

And, just for a moment, he caught the glint of silver from one of Sir Horley’s mirror.

The thought of glass made him shiver.” (p. 274)

“Perhaps Valentine would be like that someday. Studied and pored over and known. Line by line. Cover to cover. Indelibly marked in ways only he could recognise. It was not, in all honesty, a thought that troubled him.” (p. 294)

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