“The notebook had been a gift from his mother. A reward, she had said, for doing well in his test at school. On the cover was a Phoenix. “It’s a bird,” she had told him with a smile. “They never die. Not properly. They rise from the ashes of their old lives and start a new one.”

“The notebook had been a gift from his mother. A reward, she had said, for doing well in his test at school. On the cover was a Phoenix. “It’s a bird,” she had told him with a smile. “They never die. Not properly. They rise from the ashes of their old lives and start a new one.”

— Mason Sabre