Giving And Taking Book Novels & Stories

I sat with Elian in the library, not reading forbidden texts, but helping him translate star-charts, our shoulders brushing as we leaned over parchment. And slowly, the suspicion faded. They believed I was okay. And in a way, I was. Because I wasn’t hiding anymore,not really. I was just holding something precious in cupped hands, shielding it until it was strong enough to stand on its own. One afternoon, Morwen passed me in the courtyard. She didn’t speak, she just nodded, her eyes lingering on my hands for a heartbeat too long. I smiled back. She will never find the book,it was ash now.They vanished at my will. And she will never understand that the greatest power wasn’t in taking, but in g

With a deep, shaky breath, I slid out from between him and the desk, wishing that I didn’t immediately miss his warmth at my back, and turned to face him, arms folded across my chest, but holding one hand out. “Give me the book, please,” I said firmly. He didn’t move and for a second I thought he was going to try and make me fight for it. But I just raised an eyebrow and waited. Then Rig sighed and slid the book across the desk like he was dragging it reluctantly towards me. He started to turn his whole body to face me, but he misjudged the book and accidentally caught the corner of another that had been left, waiting to return. I didn’t even think—didn’t even have to make an effort.

I swallowed thickly under the force of his attention and pulled the book out of my bag, slamming it onto the desk. “What’s this for?” I snapped. His attention was diverted as he looked at the book. When he looked back up, his lips were slightly lifted. “You’ve received my gift.” Heat and annoyance churned in my chest. Was that all he had to say? “Take it back.” “No.” I reared back at the force and speed of his refusal. He leaned back, fixing me with a steady look. “It was a gift freely given. Taking it back would be discourteous and a violation of basic etiquette.” he said. “I've never done so in the past and we won't do it now.”

There was only a man who had spent a year learning not to take, and a woman who had spent a life being taken from, finding out together what it means to give freely and be received without being owned. He touched me the way he had done everything else since the night I crawled to his gate, carefully, patiently, waiting each time for the yes before he moved, so that every moment of it was a thing I handed him and not a thing he took. I surrendered nothing and offered everything, which I learned that night are opposite things, and somewhere in the dark, with my palm flat over the finished mark on his chest and his heart going hard and steady under it, I understood the whole distance I had cros

Talked about a book Chisom had read that she thought Adaeze would love and that she had brought in her bag to hand over across the table, the physical giving of a book from one reader to another, one of the oldest gestures of friendship and one of the most reliable. Adaeze took the book. Looked at the cover. Put it in her bag. "Thank you," she said. "You'll finish it in two days and want to talk about it immediately," Chisom said. "Probably," Adaeze agreed. They paid the bill. Walked out into the afternoon together — two women who had been through everything together and were still here, still talking, still walking out of restaurants together into ordinary Thursday afternoons. Chisom went t

I carry you in April, you carry me in June, the deal they had made in a kitchen at midnight after a fight about a pan, which had always been about more than the pan, which had been about the whole architecture of two people learning to distribute the weight of being alive between them rather than each carrying all of it alone. She was going to carry him through this. She was good at it now. She had been practised at receiving for five years and the receiving had made her better at the giving, had taught her the specific qualities that made the carrying useful: the not- managing-it-away, the not-trying-to-make-it-smaller,

“I know more than you think I do. Every day, I’m in this house trying to learn how to help you. How to free you. And every step I take, I’m met with closed doors and cryptic warnings. So, forgive me if I don’t immediately drop the one thing that’s finally showing me something real.” He stared at me, jaw tense, eyes unreadable. “You’ll see things,” he said, softer now. “Things that don’t go away. You’ll feel them in the dark, in your sleep. That book doesn’t give knowledge. It gives experience. And sometimes… sometimes that’s a curse all its own.” I met his gaze. “Maybe I need to see. Maybe that’s the only way I’ll understand what’s been done to you.” We stood in silence. Then, slowly, his fi

Eliza nods, “It was a gift from Benny. It’s an interesting book.” She opens it to a random page, which had a lot of sketches and illustrations of the shifting process, it also had detailed notes about various aspects and refers back to the pictures where necessary. Apparently, she’d gotten the hang of it quicker than the book suggested. Callie hums, ‘Not your first time ever, just the first in a long time.’ Eliza nods, smirking to herself. Merlin returns and looks over her shoulder,

He uttered, then released me. I cleared my throat, and folded my lips, feeling a little taken aback with the dramatic move he just made. “Well, that’s fair. Thanks.” Then he took the book from me, and returned it back to the shelf, without having to strain himself. “Hold on! That book seems special. I bet you haven’t seen it before. We need…”

I looked at where I sat before being carried to the chair, then I saw the book I was reading so I moved to pick it up quickly. He came after me and stretched his hand in front of me, telling me to give him back. I told him ‘no’ that I wanted to keep the book myself to where I took it from. He moved even closer to me as I tried to put the book behind me. His hands came around me from the front where he was standing to my back where I put the book and he took the book right out of my hands because I melted when his hands went around me. This made him get the book from me effortlessly, there was no struggle on my part.