Bejeweled Quotes

I imagined what it would be like to hold a butterfly in your hands something bejeweled and treasured and to know that despite your devotion it was dying by degrees.

Many readers simply can't stomach fantasy. They immediately picture elves with broadswords or mighty-thewed barbarians with battle axes, seeking the bejeweled Coronet of Obeisance ... (But) the best fantasies pull aside the velvet curtain of mere appearance. ... In most instances, fantasy ultimately returns us to our own now re-enchanted world, reminding us that it is neither prosaic nor meaningless, and that how we live and what we do truly matters.

Thank you for the shoes, Thomas.” I looked at the stack of boxes, teetering precariously close to the edge of the settee now. He caught my stare and nudged them back to safety. “All of them. It was very sweet. And highly unnecessary.” “Your happiness is always necessary to me.” He tilted my chin up and kissed the tip of my nose. “We’ll find new ways of navigating the world together, Wadsworth. If you can no longer wear heels, we’ll design flats you adore. If you ever find those no longer work, I’ll have a wheeled chair made and bejeweled to your liking. Anything at all in the universe you need, we will make it so. And if you’d prefer to do it on your own, I will always step aside. I also promise to keep my opinion mostly to myself.” “Mostly?” He considered that. “Unless it’s vastly inappropriate. Then I’ll share it with gusto.

The flowers were beaten down, their bent-over heads bejeweled with diamond droplets like earring on sad, rich widows

When they approached, she had figured out something that had been like a splinter in her foot: the easy thing to believe was that toubab were monsters, their crimes exceptional. Harder, however, and even more frightening was the truth: there was no such thing as monsters. Every travesty that had ever been committed had been committed by plain people and every person had it in them, that fetching, bejeweled thing just beneath the breast that could be removed at will and smashed over another’s head before it was returned to its beating place.

“And in the process,” Morpheus says from beside the fireplace, “you’ll destroy some of her best qualities.” Mom and Ivory glance at him, as if taken aback to hear those words coming from his lips. He sits hard on the chaise lounge, wings draped over the back, then slouches with elbows on knees. The silvery flames flicker across his bejeweled face. “What of her whimsy and curiosity, her compassion and loyalty? Her imagination, her dreams. These are all part of her humanness.”

Katniss, the girl on fire, has left behind her flickering flames and bejeweled gowns and soft candlelight frocks. She is as deadly as fire itself.

Her hair was pulled into a high ponytail high on her head, with unkempt bangs feathered over her brow and ears. She looked like she hadn't given a passing thought to her hair or clothes that day, maybe ever. She was pretty, but not exceptionally so. Not noticeably so, until you bothered to look. Kai realized, with some surprise, that he was looking. Which was how he noticed a splotch of grease on her brow, half covered beneath her bangs. Another laugh caught in his lungs. It was so endearing, and such a far cry from the perfectly coiffed and bejeweled girls who he normally met, that it made his fingers itch to reach across the table and rub it away. He scolded his fingers. He scolded himself. He needed to pull himself together.

Perhaps the flowers appreciate the full significance of it. They are not cowards, like men. Some flowers glory in death--certainly the Japanese cherry blossoms do, as they freely surrender themselves to the winds. Anyone who has stood before the fragrant avalanche at Yoshino or Arashiyama must have realized this. For a moment they hover like bejewelled clouds and dance above the crystal streams; then, as they sail away on the laughing waters, they seem to say: "Farewell, O Spring! We are on to eternity.

Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the spirit of the Mountain was thinking; and looked up and saw jackpines in the moon, and saw ghosts of old miners, and wondered about it. In the whole eastern dark wall of the Divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in the ravine where we roared; and on the other side of the Divide was the great western slope, and the big plateau that went to Steamboat Springs, and dropped, and led you to the eastern Colorado desert and the Utah desert; all in darkness now as we fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. And beyond, beyond, over the Sierras the other side if Carson sink was bejeweled bay-encircled nightlike old Frisco of my dreams. We were situated on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess - across the night, eastward over the plains where somewhere a man with white hair was probably walking toward us with the Word and would arrive any minute and make us silent.

Watch for the glamorous sentence that appears from nowhere - it might have plans for you. Watch out for the clauses that are elegantly strung , for the string of words bejewelled. Watch out for the ripe language-it means your words may be about to go off?

Because there is so much I want to say to you, and I made a promise in a chapel in the desert that I don't plan on breaking. Till death do us part, we said. That bejeweled priest asked if I, Grace Porter, took you, Yuki Yamamoto, to be my lawfully wedded wife, and by every power I have within me, by the endless and thunderous universe, I do, okay? I do.

Each thought a bejeweled raindrop. Hardly, just now. More like a rain puddle, cloudy and grey.

O’er the ache of mauve shores erotic winds billow long & deep … Her scent drips from the sky onto bare skin, bejeweling my senses — like a tapestry of blushing petals besieged in rhythms of passion. Whispers of untamed rapture beckons my lips as I descend into her gaze, unto the sea of bliss where I shall forever drown.

The king who stepped into the ballroom wearing a green velvet robe and bejeweled crown was none other that the tiger-man who'd prowled through my nightmares and nearly every waking moment for the past two days. Chorda.

It is not a belly button. (The umbilicus serves, then withdraws, leaving but a single footprint where it stood: the navel, wrinkled and cupped, whorled and domed, blind and winking, bald and tufted, sweaty and powdered, kissed and bitten, waxed and fuzzy, bejeweled and ignored; reflecting as graphically as breasts, seeds or fetishes the omnipotent fertility in which Nature dangles her muddy feet, the navel looks in like a plugged keyhole to the center of our being, it is true, but O navel, though we salute your motionless maternity and the dreams that have gotten tangled in your lint, you are only a scar, after all; you are not it.)

He spins us both, wrapping us in his wings until I’m dazed and giggling. “I wanted to lift you above me and swing you in circles until we were both dizzy and laughing,” he murmurs against my neck as we tumble to the ground, trapped beneath his tented wings. My body aches on impact—but it’s a delicious ache. I can hardly breathe with the weight of his ribs covering mine, with the scent of his tobacco surrounding me, smothering and intoxicating. The curve of his smiling mouth glides along my collarbone and I gasp at the velvety sensation. I force his head up so I can look at him . . . break the spell. He slips the bejeweled headband from my hair, sweeping stray strands from my face. The slickness of his gloves grazes my eye markings. “I wanted to kiss your lips and share your breath,” he says softly as he leans close.

Cinderella, until lately, has never been a passive dreamer waiting for rescue. The forerunners of the Ash-girl have all been hardy, active heroines who take their lives into their own hands and work out their own salvations .... Cinderella speaks to all of us in whatever skin we inhabit: the child mistreated, a princess or highborn lady in disguise bearing her trials with patience, fortitude, and determination. Cinderella makes intelligent decisions, for she knows that wishing solves nothing without concomitant action. We have each been that child. (Even boys and men share thatdream, as evidenced by the many Ash-boy variants.) It is the longing of any youngster sent supperless to bed or given less than a full share at Christmas. And of course it is the adolescent dream. To make Cinderella less than she is, an ill-treated but passive princess awaiting her rescue, cheapens our most cherished dreams and makes a mockery of the magic inside us all—the ability to change our own lives, the ability to control our own destinies. [The Walt Disney film] set a new pattern for Cinderella: a helpless, hapless, pitiable, useless heroine who has to be saved time and time again by the talking mice and birds because she is “off in a world of dreams.” It is a Cinderella who is not recognized by her prince until she is magically back in her ball gown, beribboned and bejewelled. Poor Cinderella. Poor us.

Altogether, Olympia thinks the sight of herself satisfactory, but not beautiful: a smile is missing, a certain light about the eyes. For how very different a woman will look when she has happiness, Olympia knows, when her beauty emanates from a sense of well-being or from knowing herself to be greatly loved. Even a plain woman will attract the eye if she is happy, while the most elaborately coiffed and bejeweled woman in a room, if she cannot summon contentment, will seem to be merely decorative.

What caught Jamal’s eye was a signed sepia-tone photograph of Emma Goldman mounted on a small bejeweled easel.

Yet each time the new scythes are bejeweled, I still rejoice, because it allows me, if only for a few glorious moments, to believe that we will all choose to live forever.

Even a plain woman will attract the eye if she is happy, while the most elaborately coiffed and bejeweled woman in a room, if she cannot summon contentment, will seem to be merely decorative.

In Views of Nature Humboldt conjured up the quiet solitude of Andean mountaintops and the fertility of the rainforest, as well as the magic of a meteor shower and the gruesome spectacle of catching the electric eels in the Llanos. He wrote of the ‘glowing womb of the earth’ and ‘bejewelled’ riverbanks. Here a desert became a ‘sea of sands’, leaves unfolded ‘to greet the rising sun’, and apes filled the jungle with ‘melancholy howlings’. In the mists at the rapids of the Orinoco, rainbows danced in a game of hide-and-seek – ‘optical magic’, as he called it. Humboldt created poetic vignettes when he wrote of strange insects that ‘poured their red phosphoric light on the herb-covered ground, which glowed with living fire as if the starry canopy of heaven had sunk upon the turf’.

Binkie, the one and only. He can hear her rings clacking on the plastic phone, and he chuckles, envisioning with amusement the bejeweled and suntanned manicured grip his grandmother thinks she has on his balls. And she does.

After a while, Peter came inside. He was bejewelled with raindrops. They had caught most beautifully in the mold at his throat. He regarded us for a little while, then came over and squatted next to us, his joints popping like green wood in a fire.

Nesta didn't care that she was covered in sweat, wearing her leathers amongst a bejewelled crowd. Not as she staggered onto the veranda at the top of the House and gaped at the stars raining across the bowl of the sky. They zoomed by so close some sparked against the stones, leaving glowing dust in their wake. She had a vague sense of Cassian and Mor and Azriel nearby, of Feyre and Rhys and Lucien, of Elain and Varian and Helion. Of Kallias and Viviane, also swollen with child and glowing with joy and strength. Nesta smiled in greeting and left them blinking, but she forgot them within a moment because the stars, the stars, the stars... She hadn't realised that such beauty existed in the world. That she might feel so full from wonder it could hurt, like her body couldn't contain all of it. And she didn't know why she cried then, but the tears began rolling down her face. The world was beautiful, and she was so grateful to be in it. To be alive, to be here, to see this. She stuck out a hand over the railing, grazing a star as it shot past, and her fingers came away glowing with blue and green dust. She laughed, a sound of pure joy, and she cried more, because that joy was a miracle.

To my mind there is nothing like the quest for jewels at their sources, which will throw a man into the whirlpool of adventure, and if he has eyes to see it, into the arms of romance itself. Adventure and romance usually prove to be uncommonly uncomfortable at first-hand, but they are the stuff of memories. Memories studded with gems, memories literally bejeweled, are to me memories worth having indeed.

I think this dress will stun the nobility, and leave them stupefied with envy and lust," Madame Sandrine announced with relish. "I'm just glad it's not crimson, like everything else you drape," Farah said to her husband as she glanced at her transformation in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors across from the raised podium on which she stood. The creation of blue silk evoked the midnight sky, as it wrapped her bosom and waist in bejeweled gathers before cascading from her hips in a dark waterfall. The shamelessly cut bodice was lent a hint of respectability by folds of a shimmering diaphanous silver material draping from a choker of gems about her neck and flowing down her shoulders like moonbeams. To call them sleeves would have been a mistake, for all they concealed. Madame Sandrine threw a teasing look over her shoulder at Blackwell. "How fitting that the color of blood is the one you prefer the most." "Not for her," Dorian rumbled. The seamstress lifted a winged eyebrow, but didn't comment. "Voila. I believe that is all I'll need from you today, Madame Blackwell. I can have these finished in the morning, and in the meantime I have a lovely soft gray frock hemmed with tiny pink blossoms that will bring out the color in your cheeks.

Radha Krishna Krishna, Svayam Bhagavan, Avatar of Vishnu, play your flute for me beneath this parasol of stars, diadems bejeweling your eternal crown, and I will dance for you a joyous dance. Svayam Bhagavan, Avatar of Vishnu, visit your consort, Radha, mantled in the black of night, the cow-herd girl who has stolen your heart, and now the gopi has become the guru and awaits her lover with open arms. Svayam Bhagavan, Avatar of Vishnu, stay the night, and learn the love of Radha,shakti, her wifely love, the svakaya-rasa, her spiritual love, the parakiya-rasa, for immortality is a curse without both of these. Svayam Bhagavan, Avatar of Vishnu, return to heaven now for the cock has crowed and yet you linger, lazy in Radha’s bed. Even endless love must seek and end to repeat the joy of new beginnings. Return, Krishna, I beseech you, for my feet are weary of the dance and I have fields to plow and rice to plant.

Tiffany launches “Hum-Bling” jewellery range in time for the Oscars “Winning an Oscar is a humbling experience – everyone says so,” explained a Tiffany spokesperson at the launch of the new designs. “So what better to wear during your humbling triumph than a piece of triumphant Hum-Bling? It’s a more brazen bejewelled look than you’d perhaps associate with Tiffany, but that’s because it’s proclaiming its humility in a voice so commanding that no one will dare contradict it. Sometimes you need a megaphone to make people hear the quietness inside.

Of all the things I expected out of you, swords were not it." "Why? I like shiny things that make other things go squish." [...] “Tell me that’s a lightsaber.” Zia came around to join them, and she was quick to correct. “No, not quite. It’s a bejeweled magical sword, activated by runes that—” “It’s totally a lightsaber,” Wicky cut in, handing it over with glee. [...] Nico was already bounding ahead, lightsaber in full swing. “My name is Nicholas di Rocci. You threatened my mage. Prepare to die!” And then he promptly started making lightsaber noises as he cut into two ROUSes. “Vrãu, vrãu—

We walked back to the hotel under a deep navy sky bejeweled with stars. In the center of the plaza a choir was singing. They held quivering candles, and their voices lilted icily into the sky. I didn't see the moment. Not really. I saw the story behind the moment - a tale passed down over two thousand years that told of a child of a superbeing sent to save the world. Never before had I seen Homo Sapiens so clearly - a species, at its most fundamental level, of story tellers. Creatures who overlay story on everything, but especially their own lives, and in so doing, can imbue a cold, random, sometimes brutal existence, with fabricated meaning.

The creature you find in Speak, Memory is rare enough to be zoo-worthy. He’s not just smarter but somehow more effete than most of us without seeming put on. Resenting him for it would be like resenting a gazelle for her grace. He doesn’t sound prissy painting himself as a cultivated synesthete who can hear colors and see music, nor vain talking as a polyglot who translates his own work back and forth into many languages. He’s just your standard virtuoso aristocrat from a gilded age. Which is the miracle of his talent. He has shaped the book to highlight his own magnificent way of viewing the world, a viewpoint that so eats your head that you never really leave his very oddly bejeweled skull, and you value things in the book’s context as he does, never missing what you otherwise adore in another kind of writer.

She’s got him so pussy-whipped.” A half-full bottle of water hit Chad high on his back, jolting him off stride. Only natural athleticism kept him from landing in a heap at the bottom of the treadmill. He slapped the red button on the console and looked around. “Fuck you, Lowell.” Chad laughed when he saw Gunny Palmer sitting in his sport chair a few feet away, dressed in workout clothes. “Well, you are. Did I see you carrying her fabulous, bejewelled purple purse the other day?” Palmer clamped his heavy jaw, dark eyes narrowing. “Yes, you did. I’ll carry the damn thing everywhere she goes if she wants me to. You know why?” “Why?” Chad asked, laughing. “Because I get to go home and crawl into bed with her at the end of the day. And if she’s fucking happy, so am I.” Duncan punched Chad on the shoulder. “I think he’s got a point.” Chad

It was midnight, and sultry as hell. All day not a breath had stirred. The country through which I passed was level as the sea that had once flowed above it. My heart had almost ceased to beat, and I was weary as the man who is too weary to sleep outright, and labours in his dreams. I slumbered and yet walked on. My blood flowed scarce faster than the sluggish water in the many canals I crossed on my weary way. And ever I thought to meet the shadow that was and was not death. But this was no dream. Just on the stroke of midnight, I came to the gate of a large city, and the watchers let me pass. Through many an ancient and lofty street I wandered, like a ghost in a dream, knowing no one, and caring not for myself, and at length reached an open space where stood a great church, the cross upon whose spire seemed bejewelled with the stars upon which it dwelt.

From: The Crown of Telus She opened her eyes, saw the crown sitting on her bedside table, and wished that it was all a dream. The crown of Trist was nothing special. It had no gemstones, no gold or silver filigree; instead it was simple, a metal circlet with four points and some inlay around a scratched and dented band. “It’s a working man’s crown,” she remembered her father holding the symbol of power out to her when she younger. “See the inlay? Three moons, one for each of our gods, over an oak which represents the mighty forests of the north, a shock of wheat for the Plainsmen to the south, a ship for the Gheltes to the west, and a hashap flower for the spice in the east. Nothing more. We don’t need anymore.” Tears welled in her eyes. A working man’s crown. Nothing fancy or bejeweled, a symbol of the power that guides the land and cares for its people. This was going to be the first day she wore it as queen.

He reached up for his elegant neck cloth and began to unfasten it, and she watched his long, pale, bejeweled fingers in something of a daze. He pulled the cloth free, his shirt coming open, and she averted her gaze from the disturbing sight of his bare chest. She heard his laugh, and then his hands were on her once more, catching her shoulders and turning her around. "Don't worry, my pet. You won't be seeing anything that might shock you." And he pulled the neck cloth over her eyes, effectively blinding her. She wanted to fight back, to struggle, but that would give him an excuse to touch her further, and the less she felt the brush of his cool fingers the better. "That's right," he said, his voice soft and approving. "Now give me your arm and we'll give you a taste of damnation." "Do you really find blasphemy that entertaining?" she said, trying not to start when he took her hand and placed it on his arm. "Always." She'd never put her hand on any arm that wasn't covered by layers of clothing, including a coat. The devil who oversaw these revels, be he Monsieur le Comte or something else, wore only a thin shirt made of the finest lawn. In her sudden world of darkness she was acutely aware of the feel of his arm beneath her fingers. The sinew and bone. The unexpected warmth of his skin, when his hands and his heart were so cold.

That night, Marjan dreamt of Mehregan. The original day of thanksgiving, the holiday is celebrated during the autumn equinox in Iran. A fabulous excuse for a dinner party, something that Persians the world over have a penchant for, Mehregan is also a challenge to the forces of darkness, which if left unheeded will encroach even on the brightest of flames. Bonfires and sparklers glitter in the evening skies on this night, and in homes across the country, everyone is reminded of their blessings by the smell of roasting 'ajil', a mixture of dried fruit, salty pumpkin seeds, and roasted nuts. Handfuls are showered on the poor and needy on Mehregan, with a prayer that the coming year will find them fed and showered with the love of friends and family. In Iran, it was Marjan's favorite holiday. She even preferred it to the bigger and brasher New Year's celebrations in March, anticipating the festivities months in advance. The preparations would begin as early as July, when she and the family gardener, Baba Pirooz, gathered fruit from the plum, apricot, and pear trees behind their house. Along with the green pomegranate bush, the fruit trees ran the length of the half-acre garden. Four trees deep and rustling with green and burgundy canopies, the fattened orchard always reminded Marjan of the bejeweled bushes in the story of Aladdin, the boy with the magic lamp. It was sometimes hard to believe that their home was in the middle of a teeming city and not closer to the Alborz mountains, which looked down on Tehran from loftier heights. After the fruit had been plucked and washed, it would be laid out to dry in the sun. Over the years, Marjan had paid close attention to her mother's drying technique, noting how the fruit was sliced in perfect halves and dipped in a light sugar water to help speed up the wrinkling. Once dried, it would be stored in terra-cotta canisters so vast that they could easily have hidden both both young Marjan and Bahar. And indeed, when empty the canisters had served this purpose during their hide-and-seek games.

My father had a sister, Mady, who had married badly and ‘ruined her life.’ Her story was a classic. She had fallen in love before the war with an American adventurer, married him against her family’s wishes, and been disinherited by my grandfather. Mady followed her husband romantically across the sea. In America he promptly abandoned her. By the time my parents arrived in America Mady was already a broken woman, sick and prematurely old, living a life two steps removed from destitution. My father, of course, immediately put her on an allowance and made her welcome in his home. But the iron laws of Victorian transgression had been set in motion and it was really all over for Mady. You know what it meant for a woman to have been so disgraced and disinherited in those years? She had the mark of Cain on her. She would live, barely tolerated, on the edge of respectable society for the rest of her life. A year after we arrived in America, I was eleven years old, a cousin of mine was married out of our house. We lived then in a lovely brownstone on New York’s Upper West Side. The entire house had been cleaned and decorated for the wedding. Everything sparkled and shone, from the basement kitchen to the third-floor bedrooms. In a small room on the second floor the women gathered around the bride, preening, fixing their dresses, distributing bouquets of flowers. I was allowed to be there because I was only a child. There was a bunch of long-stemmed roses lying on the bed, blood-red and beautiful, each rose perfection. Mady walked over to them. I remember the other women were wearing magnificent dresses, embroidered and bejeweled. Mady was wearing only a simple white satin blouse and a long black skirt with no ornamentation whatever. She picked up one of the roses, sniffed deeply at it, held it against her face. Then she walked over to a mirror and held the rose against her white blouse. Immediately, the entire look of her plain costume was altered; the rose transferred its color to Mady’s face, brightening her eyes. Suddenly, she looked lovely, and young again. She found a long needle-like pin and began to pin the rose to her blouse. My mother noticed what Mady was doing and walked over to her. Imperiously, she took the rose out of Mady’s hand and said, ‘No, Mady, those flowers are for the bride.’ Mady hastily said, ‘Oh, of course, I’m sorry, how stupid of me not to have realized that,’ and her face instantly assumed its usual mask of patient obligation. “I experienced in that moment an intensity of pain against which I have measured every subsequent pain of life. My heart ached so for Mady I thought I would perish on the spot. Loneliness broke, wave after wave, over my young head and one word burned in my brain. Over and over again, through my tears, I murmured, ‘Unjust! Unjust!’ I knew that if Mady had been one of the ‘ladies’ of the house my mother would never have taken the rose out of her hand in that manner. The memory of what had happened in the bedroom pierced me repeatedly throughout that whole long day, making me feel ill and wounded each time it returned. Mady’s loneliness became mine. I felt connected, as though by an invisible thread, to her alone of all the people in the house. But the odd thing was I never actually went near her all that day. I wanted to comfort her, let her know that I at least loved her and felt for her. But I couldn’t. In fact, I avoided her. In spite of everything, I felt her to be a pariah, and that my attachment to her made me a pariah, also. It was as though we were floating, two pariahs, through the house, among all those relations, related to no one, not even to each other. It was an extraordinary experience, one I can still taste to this day. I was never again able to address myself directly to Mady’s loneliness until I joined the Communist Party. When I joined the Party the stifled memory of that strange wedding day came back to me. . .

The weirdest manifestation of the new exclusivity was the cult of ‘Sarmatism’, based on the lunatic notion that the Polish nobility were descended from a mythic eastern warrior-tribe called the Sarmatians, justifying an imaginary racial divide with the rest of the population. In line with their newly-invented Sarmatian credentials, the szlachta developed a bizarre taste for the bejewelled and exotic.

You will wear what I choose, do what I choose," he said in a silken voice. "You know that, don't you?" She wanted to agree. She wanted to do anything to get him to move away from her, release her from his impaling gaze. She felt like a hunted rabbit caught in a snare, facing the inexorable death in her hunter's eyes. But she couldn't. She couldn't cower and waffle and let him know how very much he terrorized her. "And elf I refuse?" Her voice quavered slightly, but at least she fought. The dress was very low-cut, exposing a great deal of her chest. Her tangled red hair lay around her shoulders, and he picked up a strand, running it between his long, bejeweled fingers like a merchant testing silk. And then he brushed it slowly across the exposed swell of her breast. She couldn't control her start of shock at the subtle caress. It shouldn't have affected her, it was only her own lamentably red hair, yet the touch against her soft skin was shocking, arousing, and she made a frightened little noise. "You won't refuse, Emma," he said softly, repeating the caress. "You're a very clever child, far too wise for your own good. You know when you can win a battle, and you know when the price of putting up a fight is too high. You'll wear what I want you to wear. Won't you?" For a third time the lock of hair danced across her breast, dipping below the décolletage to slip inside the bodice of the dress. Emma wanted to scream. Instead she bit her lip. "For now," she said, amazed that her voice didn't shake. She kept her expression stonily unmoved, but he was too observant to miss the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the heightened color of her cheeks. Doubtless he would make of it what he wanted.

You don’t have any apples to offer while you’re at it, do you?" she asked sourly. "Satan tempting Eve in the garden? Not a terribly flattering role for me, is it? And you’re overdressed for the part." Amy’s blush rivalled the hue of the dangerous fruit they had been discussing. Somehow, Lord Richard’s frankly admiring gaze made the yellow muslin of her gown feel as insubstantial as a string of fig leaves. Amy covered her confusion by saying quickly, "Might I ask a favour, my lord?" "A phoenix feather from the farthest deserts of Arabia? The head of a dragon on a bejewelled platter?" "Nothing quite that complicated," replied Amy, marvelling once again at the chameleon quality of the man beside her. How could anyone be so utterly infuriating at one moment and equally charming the next? Untrustworthy, she reminded herself. Mercurial. Changeable. "A dragon’s head wouldn’t be much use to me just now, unless it could offer me directions." Richard crooked an arm. "Tell me where you need to be, and I’ll escort you." Amy tentatively rested her hand on the soft blue fabric of his coat. "That’s quite a generous offer when you don’t know where I’m going." "Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end?" suggested Richard with a lazy grin. "Methinks it is no journey?" Amy matched the quotation triumphantly, and was rewarded by the admiring light that flamed in Lord Richard’s eyes.

In any case, the royal remains of the last Goth to rule Hispania were never found-only his magnificent white stallion, still saddled and dead in a ditch. A batch of heads, severed from the necks of ranking Visigoths, was collected and wrapped in camphor-soaked cloth to send along with bejeweled hilts and gold rings to Damascus as tributary proof of the scale of the Believer's victory. Once again in history, a civilization's fate was determined by an encounter in which the objective factors of location, numbers, and equipment were decidedly not favorable to the winners.

The villains had seen better days. Cruella, with her wild black-and-white hair, wore a ratty, nearly bald black-and-white dog-fur coat, which sported a bejeweled stuffed toy Dalmatian head next to her neck. She stroked it lovingly as if it were alive. Jafar, with his trademark mustache and goatee, was rocking a potbelly, a comb-over, and puffy Sansabelt pants. Evil Queen, a former beauty, pulled at her cosmetically altered face and stared into a mirror. Mal, Evie, Jay, and Carlos feared their parents nonetheless.

As a booty or a spoil, captured, caught, with snare and toil. Selling pleasure, selling joy, Tantalizing, tortured toy; Tricked and trafficked, mocked and marred, Branded, baffled, scoffed and scarred! Wander, wander whither, why? Ye who pay while all pass by, Casting stones each at his sin As he spurns in you his kin. Fools of fortune, pity ye Your bejewelled poverty ! Hounded like a hare at bay, That no coup de grace will slay, Like a bird of broken wing, Wild, defiant, fluttering. Hither, thither, drearily, On and onward, wearily; Laughing, cursing to defy Stifled sob and surging sigh.

Ode To A Spider's Web by Stewart Stafford O to dwell in the skeletal palace, Of the spider's ceiling cobweb and, Spy on all as none can spy on you, An arachnid deity astride the world. Even with many eyes to see things, It's blind to those monstrous features, Nimble, lean legs, as wicked fingers, Weave a webbed masterpiece home. Outdone by his garden cousin's web, With backlit, bejewelled beads of dew, Undulating in a tepid, animating breeze, The house spider is a satisfied squatter. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved

whatever comes tomorrow, I don’t want to look back to tonight and think I wasted our last chance to experience whatever this is between us.” His laughter was arrogant. “You mean my dick?” I rolled my eyes. “There you go with your ‘sacred bejeweled wand’ again.” .

A god of war is also the god of those who are caught in the wheel of eternal struggle, who fight on despite knowledge of certain defeat, who stand with their companions against spear and catapult and gleaming metal, armed with only their pride, who strive and assay and press and toil, all the while knowing that they cannot win.’ ‘You are not only the god of the strong, but also the god of the weak. Courage is better displayed when it seems all is lost, when despair appears the only rational course.’ ‘True courage is to insist on seeing when all around you is darkness.’ And Fithowéo stood up and ululated. As his voice filled the cave walls and bounced back to his ears, he seemed to see the stalactites hanging overhead like bejeweled curtains, the stalagmites growing out of the ground like bamboo shoots, the bats careening through the air like battle kites, the night-blooming orchids and cave roses blooming like living treasure—the cave was filled with light. The god of war laughed and bowed down to the orchid and kissed her. ‘Thank you for showing me how to see.’ ‘I am but the lowest of the Hundred Flowers,’ said the orchid. ‘But the tapestry of Dara is woven not only from the proud chrysanthemum or the arrogant winter plum, the bamboo who holds up great houses or the coconut who provides sweet nectar and pleasing music. Chicory, dandelion, butter-and-eggs, ten thousand species of orchids, and countless other flowers—we have no claim to the crests of the great noble families, and we are not cultivated in gardens and not gently caressed by the fingers of great ladies and eager courtiers. But we also fight our war against hail and storm, against drought and deprivation, against the sharp blade of the weeding hoe and the poisonous emanations of the herbicide-sprayer. We also have a claim on time, and we deserve a god who understands that every day in the life of the common flower is a day of battle.’ And Fithowéo continued to ululate, letting his throat and ears be his eyes, until he strode out of the cave, emerged into the sunlight, and picked up two pieces of darkest obsidian and placed them in his eye sockets so that he had eyes again. Though they were blind to light, they sowed fear into all who gazed into them.

bejeweled flamingo brooch, and dark glasses. She sipped a Campari and soda, the ice cubes clinking against one another in her tall glass.

it appears as slender, ephemeral red threads tangled between Ansar’s long, bejeweled fingers. He wears multiple rings made of gold, silver, and precious gemstones.

According to historian Richard Sennett, an anti-Jewish canard condemned the Jewish banker who lent money at interest as a kind of sexual deviant who “puts his money to the unnatural act of generation”—combining the sins of avarice and lust. The clergy who insisted on sectarian segregation similarly tied the lust of the bejeweled temptress to the greed of the Jew. For example, Friar Giacoma della Marca insisted that feminine vanity was both a sign and an instrument of the avaricious Jew: the lust for luxury drove Christian families into debt and ultimately forced them “to pawn to the Jew for ten [soldi] a garment he will resell for thirty… Whence Jews become rich and Christians paupers.” According to Hughes, “[T]he Jewish sign, which came to mark Jews throughout the Italian peninsula in the fifteenth century, can almost everywhere be traced” to such religious teachings that linked Jewish impurity to the corruption of cosmopolitan cities where Christian and Jew mingled promiscuously.

My beautiful, deadly little Stardust, as I've decided to call her. A representation of the complicated supernova of feelings I've experienced since first laying eyes on her. Like the dusty remains of a star's chaotic explosion, she’s somehow managed to coat every piece of my existence with her bejeweling presence, and she doesn’t even know who I am.

I know, Mum. So what did you call for?’ ‘Well... just quickly. When you have a second, can you please send me some Bejeweled Blitz coins?

Cam wiped all expression from his face as he discovered he had been seated next to the vicar’s wife, whom he had met on previous visits to Stony Cross Park. The woman was terrified of him. Whenever he looked at her, tried to talk to her, she cleared her throat incessantly. Her sputtery noises brought to mind a tea kettle with an ill-fitting lid. No doubt the vicar’s wife had heard one too many stories of Gypsies stealing children, placing curses on people, and attacking helpless females in a frenzy of uncontrolled lust. Cam was tempted to inform the woman that, as a rule, he never kidnapped or pillaged before the second course. But he kept silent and tried to look as unthreatening as possible, while she shrank in her chair and made desperate conversation with the man at her left. Turning to his right, Cam found himself staring into Amelia Hathaway’s blue eyes. They had been seated next to each other. Pleasure unfolded inside him. Her hair shone like satin, and her eyes were bright, and her skin looked like it would taste of some dessert made with milk and sugar. The sight of her reminded him of an old-fashioned gadjo word that had amused him when he had first heard it. Toothsome. The word was used for something appetizing, conveying the pleasure of taste, but also sexual allure. He found Amelia’s naturalness a thousand times more appealing than the powdered and bejeweled sophistication of other women present. “If you’re trying to look meek and civilized,” Amelia said, “it’s not working.

He habitually contrasted the beaten, penniless, half-naked King of the Jews screaming betrayal on a cross with the bejeweled, glamorously dressed pope whispering homilies above the Vatican’s vault.

The Alchemy of Grit and Shit Pearls of wisdom opalescent, shucked from scalloped shells, grow from grit and shit, of things unpleasant, of each man's personal hell. Often creation's bejeweled fundaments grow from excrement, nature's inside joke, the stink a wink to those attuned, that the squalid and most foul shall alchemize into the excellent. Such is the temperament of the twin-mooned oyster's wound!

A public sacrifice for the sins of the people came after that. Though the decreeing of the destinies and dazzling procession of the gods through the streets in bejeweled chariots would not happen until day eight, the gods began their council assembly on day five. After the procession on the eighth day, the priest-king would engage in hieros gamos, the Sacred Marriage rite of sex with his queen, in place of Inanna, to insure fertility in the coming year. Emzara dreaded the Sacred Marriage, for it was her decreed appointment with Lugalanu.

My state’s constitution seems to contain a provision requiring that once every two years we must pass a bill which dazzles the entire country in its glittering, bejeweled stupidity. Not all of them are bad. I rather like the absurd ones. For instance, it is illegal to go whale hunting in Oklahoma. That law is certainly a nice gesture (whales both sing and have giant brains, putting them one point ahead of many legislators). But humpback poaching has never really been problematic in our part of the country, what with it being landlocked and all.

the family home, polished to within an inch of its life, was sparkling like a bejeweled old dame dressed for her annual opera outing. A

You have beautiful hair"... and she reached out to touch it, her bejeweled fingers gently caressing my head. A tear slipped down my cheek. I knew how the lepers felt when Jesus touched them and made them whole again.

For how very different a woman will look when she has happiness, Olympia knows, when her beauty emanates from a sense of well-being or from knowing herself to be greatly loved. Even a plain woman will attract the eye if she is happy, while the most elaborately coiffed and bejeweled woman in a room, if she cannot summon contentment, will seem to be merely decorative.

in Chapter 32, Moses returned to Mount Sinai. This time God wrote the Commandments on two stone tablets and gave Moses specific instructions on how to build a special chest, called an ark, in which to carry them. He also gave Moses instructions on how to make other sacred objects, such as a bejeweled gold breastplate, two onyx balls inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes, and a golden crown.

We are talking 1982 here, a time when Brazil was not known for its safety. That very day, as I left Rio, a radio report came on about a woman whose glittering bejeweled hand had been macheted off as she drove through town with the window open.

Mistress,' he said in a rumbling, honey-thick tone. His tongue rolled over each syllable, tasting it, savoring it before serenading her with the sound. 'How may I serve you?

So, unless you're gonna pull a rabbit out of your pants, or somethin' . . .

Nikki straightened up so quickly that the room lurched. There were tears in her eyes before she even knew they were there. 'Bring Abbie back,' she whispered. The trembling in her hands had spread, and now her whole body shook. 'Please. Bring her back.' Sef set his teacup down, brow creased. 'Who's Abbie?

Oh, Jesus. Mulder and Scully are real.

Sef was watching The Mummy, and it wasn't even the good one.

He met her gaze then, the amber effulgence of his eyes burning like hot embers straight into her soul. He smiled. 'As you wish.' Then he turned from her and waved his hand.

The room darkened as the movie screen burst into a sea of silver light, swirling with a howl that shook the very foundation of the theater. A scream rose in Nikki's throat as the walls shook, cracking and crumbling all around them. She shielded her eyes as that pale light grew ever brighter, ever closer to her, so close now that she could see a myriad of colors buried beneath it. They sparked and writhed like electric serpents with golden sunbursts for heads, devoured and spat out by the maelstrom again and again as it undulated toward her.

You did this,' she gritted, pacing back and forth across the carpet. 'You sent us here. All I did was try to help you, and now we're gonna die. I hate water. I hate the ocean, I hate the rain, I hate pools and ponds and lakes . . .

He brushed his fingers down her back until he held the strings of her corset between them. 'Shall I unlace you?

What the hell's so great about proper, anyway? she thought. Proper sucks.

What's my name again?' she muttered as they closed the distance. 'Nefersekhmet,' he answered. 'Princess Nefersekhmet. Of Nubia.' She snorted. 'Jesus. How the hell do you expect me to remember all that? I don't even know what it means!' 'Sekhmet is the name of an Egyptian goddess,' Sef explained, lowering his voice to a whisper. 'Her purview was wrath and war.She was known as the Mistress of Dread. The Lady of Slaughter. She Who Mauls. Given your temper, I thought it was fitting.' Nikki sucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. 'What about the other part?' 'Nefer?' he asked. 'Well, that one's simple. It means beautiful.' He offered her his arm. 'And you are.

He's our on-board alienist,' Louis said, leaning in and lowering his voice. 'A German one.' Dr. Adderby bristled. 'We aren't called alienists anymore.' 'Psychologist, then,' Louis said with a shrug. 'On his way to America to teach the Yankees how to combat female hysteria.' He waggled his fingers suggestively.

Louis chuckled and brought his glass of champagne to his lips. 'Vous devriez appredre a se detendre, docteur.' 'I'm sorry,' Nikki said. 'I don't understand . . . ' Dr. Adderby glowered. 'He says I should lighten up.' Louis beamed. 'Oui.

Excuse me,' Louis called above the whining strings. The waiter turned. 'I think the princess is ready for you to take her order.' The way her title left his lips dripped with emphasis and a touch of anger. His eyes glinted with a look that said, I know what you're doing. I'm on to you.

Jesus, what the hell is a plover?

He quirked a brow. 'You're worried about America?' 'No.' She waved her hand and almost spilled her drink. 'I'm worried about icebergs.

You are truly the embodiment of a god, my queen,' Sef breathed, 'but even that is beyond your power. Akhenaten--' Meskhenetys scowled. 'Was a heretic. A false idol. I am neither, and I shall have my way.' She set her jaw in defiance. 'My husband has many wives. Why should I play by different rules?

Sef closed his eyes. 'I hate blood magic,' he said.

And where the devil did you find this one?' Louis asked. 'Was the Valley of the Kings having a rummage sale?' Stead regarded him. 'You've heard of Daressy?' 'The French Egyptologist?' 'Yes, that's the one. He uncovered the ruins of an enormous palace complex back in eighteen eighty-eight--a site he called Malkata. One of his workers . . . ' Stead made a vague gesture. ' . . . liberated the artifact from what he thought was a temple devoted to Isis, one of the chief goddesses of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. When a friend of mine traveled to Egypt some time later, he became awar eof this find and brought it back home with him to England, where he offered it to me as a gift.' 'Ah,' Louis said. 'So it was a rummage sale.

And where the devil did you find this one?' Louis asked. 'Was the Valley of the Kings having a rummage sale?' Stead regarded him. 'You've heard of Daressy?' 'The French Egyptologist?' 'Yes, that's the one. He uncovered the ruins of an enormous palace complex back in eighteen eighty-eight--a site he called Malkata. One of his workers . . . ' Stead made a vague gesture. ' . . . liberated the artifact from what he thought was a temple devoted to Isis, one of the chief goddesses of the ancient Egyptian pantheon. When a friend of mine traveled to Egypt some time later, he became aware of this find and brought it back home with him to England, where he offered it to me as a gift.' 'Ah,' Louis said. 'So it was a rummage sale.

It was a surreal experience, allowing a dark god to walk her to her door.

The closer they got to the water, the more anxious Nikki felt. She could see it swelling before them, hear it churning far below. And yet the Titanic cut through the waves as though the ocean's fury meant nothing at all. No wonder she sank. The sheer arrogance . . .

Tears welled in Nikki's eyes--tears of anger, wonder, and awe. Anger because although she had the ability to change the Titanic's fate, she could not use it. Wonder because if what Sef said was true, everything she thought she knew about the world--its very code--amounted to nothing at all. And awe at the sensation of magic--real magic!--slipping between her fingers, licking her flesh, and for just a moment, infusing her with the kind of power few others would ever know.

Wigs were a big thing there?' 'Oh, yes. Lice were a constant concern.' Nikki made a face. 'Incest and lice. Man, Egypt sounds like a blast.

A woman as intelligent, strong, resourceful, quick-witted, and beautiful as you are deserves an equal,' he said at last. 'Someone who appreciates all those things and isn't only searching for a new, exotic trophy to hang from his arm. Someone who complements the extraordinary life you already live, and who will be present in it.

You aren't there anymore, Nikki. You're here.' He paused, then added, 'With me.' 'No, I'm not,' she said, lifting her head and wiping her face. 'I'm always there, with her at that lake. I'm always on the dock where I watched my baby sister die.

You look . . . spellbinding,' he breathed, his smile so wide it damn near touched his ears. 'Breathtaking. Divine. Avoir le coeur qui bat la chamade.' French, sweet as honey, dripped off his tongue, yet he shook his head as if he'd fallen short. 'There simply aren't enough words in any language to describe what a vision you are, my dear.' Nikki smiled. She'd worried for days whether or not Louis was Apophys, or at least one of his servants. But in his presence, she felt only genuine emotion--his excitement and tenderness. It would have been easier the other way around. Knowing these were his true feelings broke her heart.

I'm fascinated by darkness,' he whispered, so close now that she could smell the fragrance of his breath. There was a black note to it, a scent like coffee or chocolate, and a bite of something heavier coming from his skin--balsamic and pepper. 'Enthralled by the obscene. The macabre. Even the occult, should the mood arise. But I've never found another who might accompany me on these ghastly journeys. Not everyone is worthy of dipping their toes into the void like we are. Fewer still would survive.' He wet his lips with a dart of his tongue. 'What say you, princess? I'll show you mine if you show me yours . . .

Careful, Rasputin, or I'll knock you on your ass again.

I'll voodoo your face.

Time slowed. Nikki could feel every throb of her pulse, every crackle of her nerves as Sef swept away reality with the crush of his lips. His tongue was a flame darting against her own, his breath a billowing gust of incense that filled her nostrils and scorched her lungs. He was spice and cedar, whiskey and warm pumpkin pie. He was the dunes of Egypt and the rising sun, the breeze off the Nile, and the jackals prowling beneath the moon.

You ate Wikipedia?!

I've defeated high priests and kings. And I'm not going to lose to a machine.

Are you sure these are gonna work?' Sef leaned in to answer, 'Do you want the truth, or a lie?' 'Lie to me.' 'Then I am one hundred percent sure these amulets will work,' Sef told her with a smile and a nod in the direction of Mr. Ismay, who sat at the end of the table on Molly's right with his arms folded and a sour look on his face. 'They will thwart any attempts Apophys may make on your life and also fill our stateroom with soft, fluffy kittens. We will win the day and return to Sanctum Harbor on the back of a rainbow.' 'While riding unicorns?' 'While riding unicorns.

She had no idea how Sef couldn’t see it. The demon was right there, not ten feet away. Nikki had seen its likeness in her dreams, but the Ammut painted on mudbrick and stone was nothing like the behemoth that stood before her in the flesh. It had a great, lashing tail that swept between the walls like a whip, staining them with a black ichor that hissed as it burned through the wood. Its whole body dripped with this filth. Its thick, tangled mane was matted with it. With every step it took, it spattered gobs of the stuff onto the ground, leaving imprints of its massive, mismatched feet in its wake–part hippopotamus, part lion. Ammut flexed its claws as it took another sniff of the air, inhaling through its obscene, crocodilian snout. Its nostrils were half decayed; parts of them had come loose and flapped whenever the creature breathed. Then it let out a hoarse, staccato series of barks that made the mark in Nikki’s skull thrum wildly. She knew it was calling to her, beckoning her to seal her fate. She almost wanted to answer, to go to it and allow its rotten, toothy jaws to clamp around her soul.

What strange bravery,' he mused, looking down into her eyes, 'that you would sacrifice everything to save a dead man. How very . . . Egyptian of you.

I wish the gods weren't sleeping. I wish they were watching us. Right now.