“I'm a troubadour! I sing and dance wherever I go! Whatever your style, I'll make you smile. Do not fear—I'll bring you cheer. I promise my song will warm your heart. Tales of old and tales of time. Perk your ears and lift your veils! I'm a troubadour—yessir I am!”
“Sir, this is a Tibetan monastery. Now I don't know why you're here, why you felt the need to make this trek, or why you think it's a good idea to stand there singing this fucking song—but either you shut up or I'll personally help the monks throw you off a cliff.”
— Bastian Espada
“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” The girl pointed her finger at her grandmother.
Dad sighed. “Well, I suppose that's the way it is.”
“Indeed, it is.” Mom walked towards the elderly woman, grabbed her by the arm, and chucked her into the magma below.
— Bastian Espada
“I'm a logologologist. I study the study of study.” The man pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Decades of engaging in this practice have enabled me to acquire a level of comprehension of reality far beyond that of an ordinary human being.”
“Is that why you're in prison though?” the young man asked.
“Oh no, not at all. I tried kidnapping a drug-sniffing dog, didn't go as planned, ended up using the last bit of heroin I had left to calm it down, it worked but the dog died.”
— Bastian Espada
“I really wish Daddy hadn't stolen my birthday cake.”
“And I really wish daddy hadn't stolen my heart!” The woman chuckled,then took a sip of her coffee.
“Mommy, why does Daddy do things like that?”
The woman cradled the girl's hands. “Baby, sometimes it's difficult for us humans to understand why Daddy's kind behave the way they do.”
— Bastian Espada
The two most powerful men in the world stared at each other.
Their gazes both stabbed and burned—the table between them groaned under the weight of billions of lives.
“So what's it going to be, submission or annihilation?”
“I choose the third option.”
He farted.
— Bastian Espada
Flippy’s tears dissolved into the ocean. That lifelong, never-dormant fear had finally materialized.
Even though she couldn't understand hydrodynamics, she had no doubt that her unique condition—her inability to race through the waters—was the reason she couldn't stay among the pod.
She gave her mother one last look, turned around, and swam away.
That's how the first and only furry dolphin began the rest of her life in exile.
— Bastian Espada
“And where would you fine gents be headed today?”
“Hell.”
They shot him.
— Bastian Espada
“No kinder season have you brought me, than this one before your expiration,” Luna said to Sol, “for your arms now stretch, at the billiard hour.”
“And yet I curse the fates, my dear moon. For it's only now that my core's hydrogen has been made vacant, and I stare death in the face, that I can finally embrace, your sweet silver skin.”
“Perish your bitter rumination, my dear star—for we are to become as one. Dust to dust and gas to gas, forevermore in the vast expanse.”
Sol smiled. Luna smiled.
Billions of living things on Earth screamed in terror.
— Bastian Espada