Children of Ruin (Children of Time Book 2)

And that in itself is a miracle; that is the grand triumph Senkovi never grasped, that his creatures could empathize, could apply a theory of mind to entities quite unlike themselves, could be great-hearted enough to be happy that someone else was laughing, even if they couldn’t get the joke.

Only by accepting the other can it truly find diversion and inspiration; only by allowing the universe to be separate from it can it have the infinite variety it craves.

He heard peeping like miniscule baby birds from around his feet. A flier flailed overhead, clacking angrily at him. Something keened shrilly from far off. The tortoises gurgled as they moved, as though their innards were churning wet rocks together. He had not known. The drones and remotes had never heard these songs, smelled these weird odours.

The intent was defeated by each day, by the crushing weight of spiritual gravity that pushed down on him.

Senkovi’s personal theory was that the pressure of being in the middle of the food chain was an essential prerequisite for complex intelligence. Like humans (and like Portiid spiders, had he only known), octopuses had developed in a world where they were both hunter and hunted. Top predators, in Senkovi’s assessment, were an intellectual dead end.

could be great-hearted enough to be happy that someone else was laughing, even if they couldn’t get the joke.