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Title: Gods of Jade and Shadow
Authors: Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Category:supplementals
Number of Highlights: 27
Date: 2026-02-20
Last Highlighted: **
Highlights
She knew about patan. Not just tribute, but duty and beyond duty, the obligation that carves your place in the world, and she wasnât about to disregard it. But her hands were trembling.
Tags:duty
The things you name do grow in power, but others that are not ever whispered claw at oneâs heart anyway, rip it to shreds even if a syllable does not escape the lips.
Like many young people, ultimately she saw herself as a completely new creature, a creation that had sprung from no ancient soils.
The nature of hate is mysterious. It can gnaw at the heart for an eon, then depart when one expected it to remain as immobile as a mountain. But even mountains erode.
Fate is a force more powerful than gods, a fact they resent, since mortals are often given more leeway and may be able to navigate its current.
Tags:fantasy
âYou did not rescue me,â Casiopea replied. âI opened that chest. Besides, I wasnât a princess in a tower. I knew Iâd get away one way or another, and I was not waiting for a god to liberate me. That would have been both silly and unlikely.â
Tags:fantasy
Ah, there is none more fearful of thieves than the one who has stolen something, and a kingdom is no small something.
Tags:perspective,problem_solving,stress
Mortals have always been frightened of the nightâs velvet embrace and the creatures that walk in it, and yet they find themselves mesmerized by it. Since all gods are born from the kernel of mortal hearts, it is no wonder Xibalba reflected this duality.
The imagination of mortals shaped the gods, carving their faces and their myriad forms, just as the water molds the stones in its path, wearing them down through the centuries. Imagination had also fashioned the dwellings of the gods.
Tags:fantasy
Folktales are full of such coincidences that are never coincidences at all, but the brittle games of powerful forces.
Tags:stories
âYou shouldnât do everything you want just because you can,â her mother said. âThat is precisely why MartĂn is such a terrible man.â
Once Carnival was over, the fairer skinned, wealthier inhabitants of the city might look with disdain at the âIndiansâ and the âblacks,â but for that night there was a polite truce in the elaborate game of class division.
In the end âso long, MartĂnâ is what she had yearned to say all along, and there was more satisfaction in it than any elaborate revenge fantasy she could have conjured. They were headed in different directions, and this was sufficient.
She smiled at Hun-Kamé. He smiled at her too. What was this? A simple act of mimicry? The smile, like his laughter, like the errant dream, came from his heart. Did he realize it? Does everyone who has been young and foolish realize the extent and depth of their emotions? Of course not.
âWe are all alone in the world,â he said, and his words were the clouds when they muffle the moon at night, they resembled the earth gone bitter, choking the sprout in its cradle.
âItâs all symbols, the stories we tell; if you give me a name I could die and I could open my eyes again, and Iâd remember that name.â
âDreams are for mortals.â âWhy?â âBecause they must die.â
âBesides, bitterness will only poison you, not them.â
âMortals prayed to us and gave us sacrifices, they composed hymns and burned incense. They donât anymore. When your grandfather lanced his skin and drew blood, and begged me to pay him a visit, reciting the proper words, I was curious. The greatest sacrifices are always in blood and from a mortalâs own volition. Unfortunately, it was a trap. He was working for my brother.â
It was TâhĂł before the Spaniards stumbled upon the cityâonce glorious, then ruined, as all earthly things must be ruinedâand named it MĂ©rida.
The mortal vitality that gave him strength, that allowed him to roam the lands of men, would slowly pollute him. It would turn Hun-KamĂ© more and more mortal each day, until, if he could not restore his powers, Hun-KamĂ© would snatch the last heartbeat from the human heart and, with it, the whole of the mortalâs essence. And he would become almost completely a man, no longer a god.
âChuâlel,â he said. âIt is the sacred life force that resides around you. In the streams, in the resins of trees, in the stones. It births gods and those gods are shaped by the thoughts of men. Gods belong to the place where the chuâlel emanated and birthed them; they may not travel too far. The god of your church, if he is awake, does not live in these lands.â
âVery well,â she said, and with those two words she accepted her fate, horrid or wonderful as it might be.
âNeither locks, nor wards, can keep a Lord of Xibalba out. Death enters all dwellings.â
âYoung, as you are young. Look at you, like the dawn,â he said. âYou canât understand, of course, but one day youâll want to be new again,â he continued. âYouâll wish to return to this moment of perfection when you were the embodiment of all promises.â
A god can make the volcanos boil and cook alive the villagers who have made their abodes near its cone, but what good is that? If gods destroyed all humans, there would be no adoration and no sacrifice, which is the fresh wood that replenishes a fire.
She did not pause to question her sanity, to think she might be hallucinating. She accepted him as real and solid. She could see him, and she knew she was not mad or prone to flights of fancy, so she trusted her eyes.