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“Sometimes, curiosity overpowers the warning of danger. It just does. Especially, when the human brain doesn’t have enough memories to measure the level of danger. Because the brain lacks examples, past references. People call it experience. So, when the reference data is few, the only option is to get more of it. Curiosity is an inexperienced brain’s call to collect reference data. Right now, this very human curiosity burns her brain.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Her blue hair and blue eyes look nothing like those of Rashad and Meera, which pains her sometimes.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“She looks at her palm. It feels warmer. It feels as if it has touched something evil. And now the evil is calling. Now, evil feels attractive. Slowly, and ever so slowly, she brings her palm closer to her nose and takes a long, deep breath. Purpose â€� Remember your purpose—the whisper bells like the songs Meera sings every morning.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“When a prayer doesn’t work, you rephrase it.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Kusha digs through her chain of thoughts, looking blankly at the air. Soon, her mind reaches the source thought like a train reaching its destination.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“If someone knows you are trying to avoid something, why would they ask again? Why would they press? Isn’t that rude? It is rude, according to Learn Basic Manners. It’s a basic manner.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Kusha felt a tinge of pride, exponentially multiplied by her Low-Grade inferiority complex, reading this footnote.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“I’m fine,â€� Kusha interrupts with a lie.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“She never interrupted Meera before, let alone with a lie.”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Even if she rebuilds hundreds of old cars, will it ever equal to healing a tiny life? Will it equal evolution?”
― Misba, The High Auction

“If you’re a bug, you need toads—dozens of toads so you may evolve.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Comfort isn’t always a blessing.
Comfort brings zero evolution.
Comfort gives no Grades.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“To think she has forfeited her ethics for the Devil’s Book! The only book in the world she sees in her dreams, daydreams, and nightmares. The only book that may have the real secrets of voice instead of boring jargon page after page, tickling your curiosity and giving you the things you already know.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Rumors exist of what those High-Grades can do: They kill with gaze; they voice the wind; they eat nothing; they’ve seen the source of the universe â€� Kusha heard in the Old City. She doesn’t have High-Grades or voice or killing gazes. But she has a gift—her prophetic alarms. Most people name it the sixth-sense. Those occasional sensations that come without warning. Then, she finds herself knowing things she isn’t supposed to know.
Like now�
It happens again. A prophetic alarm comes, and it comes with a silent scream in her head. As if hundreds of frozen needles have pierced her eyes and reached her brain, injecting information she never knew before. Kusha calls it alarms, not sixth-sense. Not even intuition. Intuition sounds High-Grade, something those evolved people may have. The book God-Particle-Or-Thought-Particle says: ‘Intuition is the passing thoughts downloaded from the universe.â€� Kusha isn’t confident enough to believe it can happen to her. No way could she download anything as an unevolved, untouchable, Low-Grade.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“How do you know these things?â€� Taha shouts, “Brain? Mind? Guts? Soul? You said you’ll teach me!”
― Misba, The High Auction

“It’s a tiny plant, but that’s not the point. The point is, she can’t heal it. She can only heal â€� well, not heal, but 'fix' ruined cars.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Mastering time isn’t about stopping time, rather, slowing down its effects.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“In seven years, she has achieved her first desire—she learned to speak (in a month), sure. But speaking means nothing if you don’t have voice—the real voice.
The voice that never fears.
The voice that never doubts.
The voice that wins without being loud.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Sometimes, she feels each of her cells bursting whenever she hears questions. Just any questions from anyone. If someone knows you are trying to avoid something, why would they ask again? Why would they press? Isn’t that rude? It is rude, according to Learn Basic Manners. It’s a basic manner.
Every unevolved Low Grade would avoid talking about how it was like partying among the High Grades, won’t they? Won’t they try to hide that they had to hear about the healing powers of a High Grade’s semen?”
― Misba, The Oldest Dance

“Kusha heard people whisper about it in the Old City—the lawless city where sunlight never reaches the ground.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Meera found her watching the morning sky standing stripped on the roof.

“I’m your mother. Mo-ther,â€� Meera said, approaching her adopted teen daughter, repeating ‘Motherâ€� several times. “And you cannot be naked, sweetie,â€� she added, covering Kusha with her wide, red shawl—spiral depictions of snails in golden stitches all over it. It was warm; at least, as warm as Meera’s voice that sounded as if it were water pouring through rocks in a desert.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Kusha, settling into the driver’s seat of the truck, gazes vacantly in the air. Is it safe to go now? (a) Yes (b) No: she wonders and soon finds the answer with her intuition-like alarm. It’s easy to pick the right one when the options are only two. “Yes. It’s safe.â€�
“I love your intuition!â€� Taha says. “It’s unfair you don’t tell me the war hero action-figure winning numbers.â€� She makes a sad face. She saw how Kusha correctly guessed the High Auction’s ticket number one digit at a time. If you have a lottery-guessing sister, it’s hard not to feel excited.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Humans sinned. Persistently existing in clogged colonies was their sin.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Uncertainty—not for food or shelter, but for life. Fear of death. Fear of living alone.
He was a child back then. Him and Ruem.
“Win your fear, and you’ll evolve.â€� Their Master’s voice lulls the Monk in his mind.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Kusha didn’t ask, “What’s wrong with looking too beautiful?â€� She knew what Meera would say: “Beat me on the sand, and I’ll let you run as wild and beautiful as you want, sweetie.â€�”
― Misba, The High Auction

“That ‘it’ll never come againâ€� felt so ominous, so striking! If words were measured like temperature, they’d feel as cold as a planet with no sun and as dark as the ground of the Old City.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Kusha pushes the last of her long screw into the soil, another expensive thing she bought from the Old City. The almost-broken, two-inch seedling now stands supported. Guilt, partly for a tiny seedling, slightly more for being an unobservant, untouchable human who isn’t graded yet.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“She’s a twenty-three-year-old. By this time, people become at least Grade C while she started the grade race only seven years ago.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“Meera ordered Taha to train for two hours. It still isn’t two hours. Kusha wonders if she’s being a bad sister.”
― Misba, The High Auction

“So, the ‘you should be prepared for anythingâ€� part of Meera’s speech is ignorable? Kusha thinks. She never speaks her thoughts, or maybe she speaks only 1% of her thoughts, but it’s not the reason she halts now. Kusha widens her eyes. That ‘it’ll never come againâ€� felt so ominous, so striking! If words were measured like temperature, they’d feel as cold as a planet with no sun and as dark as the ground of the Old City.”
― Misba, The High Auction