“The dove does not seek the sky. The dove seeks the hand that throws it upward, knowing the same hand will catch it when it falls.”
“I stopped making because they wanted miracles,” the Maker said. “They did not want the patience of the lathe, the humility of the chisel. They wanted fire from heaven. So I gave them silence.”
“He will not return to the Temple,” Eliab whispered to his granddaughter, Tamar. “He will return to the making .”
The dove launched from His palm, but it did not fly east toward the Salt Flats. It flew west, over the city, over the gilded altars and the counting-houses, over the priests who had forgotten how to pray and the merchants who had forgotten how to bleed. It flew until it was a speck, then a memory.
“You hid it well,” the Maker said.