I realized these were all Norns.

I thought about what I had done to these creatures. I thought about how I had wanted to save them.

I was not looking at save dates. I was looking at epitaphs. I was looking at headstones. This was not suspended animation at all. I had made coffins.

I had been paralyzed by my own fear of mortality, and so, one at a time, I’d paralyzed my Norns.

I had not saved them from their own too-short lives. It was exactly the opposite: I was so frightened of watching them die, I had murdered them instead.

via A Constant Furrowing: Death, Motherhood and ‘Creatures’ | Unwinnable.

A great read on exactly the kind of mentality that means we shouldn’t be taking things too seriously. Make mistakes, not for the sake of making mistakes, but because you have many, many more lessons to learn.

And if that means a Norn has an unsatisfactory life here and there, so be it.