Empire of Silence

We live in stories, and in stories, we are subject to phenomena beyond the mechanisms of space and time. Fear and love, death and wrath and wisdom—these are as much parts of our universe as light and gravity. The ancients called them gods, for we are their creatures, shaped by their winds.

The world’s soft the way the ocean is. Ask any
sailor what I mean. But even when it is at its most violent, Hadrian . . . focus on the beauty of it.