Blanket Of Clouds Quotes

Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket.

The richness of the rain made me feel safe and protected; I have always considered the rain to be healing—a blanket—the comfort of a friend. Without at least some rain in any given day, or at least a cloud or two on the horizon, I feel overwhelmed by the information of sunlight and yearn for the vital, muffling gift of falling water.

While an elderly man in his mid-eighties looks curiously at a porno site, his grandson asks him from afar, “‘What are you reading, grandpa?’” “‘It’s history, my boy.’” “The grandson comes nearer and exclaims, “‘But this is a porno site, grandpa, naked chicks, sex . . . a lot of sex!’” “‘Well, it’s sex for you, my son, but for me it’s history,’ the old man says with a sigh.” All of people in the cabin burst into laughter. “A stale joke, but a cool one,” added William More, the man who just told the joke. The navigator skillfully guided the flying disc among the dense orange-yellow blanket of clouds in the upper atmosphere that they had just entered. Some of the clouds were touched with a brownish hue at the edges. The rest of the pilots gazed curiously and intently outwards while taking their seats. The flying saucer descended slowly, the navigator’s actions exhibiting confidence. He glanced over at the readings on the monitors below the transparent console: Atmosphere: Dense, 370 miles thick, 98.4% nitrogen, 1.4% methane Temperature on the surface: ‒179°C / ‒290°F Density: 1.88 g/cm³ Gravity: 86% of Earth’s Diameter of the cosmic body: 3200 miles / 5150 km.

Rain is a lullaby heard through a thick, isolating blanket of clouds. It is the tinkling harp of water droplets; a moist breath whistling through willow reeds; a pattering beat background to the mourner's melody. Rain is a soft song of compassion for the brokenhearted.

The sky was a feather blanket of clouds, save for one blue hole in the fabric. A blue cloud in a white sky.

Love, be mystical as the flickering blue flame of night as the fully-awoken moon beneath cobwebs of passing clouds amidst chanting high-tides fuzzy, as my blanket big enough to illuminate a hundred thousand billion galaxies and just small enough to fit into my embrace.

It was lemon verbena day, so the house was filled with a sweet-tart scent that conjured images of picnic blankets and white clouds shaped like true-love hearts.

The mist starts to form as we stand close to one another. It is a distant fog that rises from the horizon, and I find that I grow fearful as it approaches. It slowly creeps in, enveloping the world around us, fencing us in as if to prevent escape. Like a rolling cloud, it blankets everything, closing, until there is nothing left but the two of us.

What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent. The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance. But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment . . . What a soft thoughtful time. In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color.

A golden half-moon graced the black velvet sky, no clouds in sight, allowing a blanket of stars to twinkle in every direction.

You don't waste October sunshine. Soon the old autumn sun would bed down in cloud blankets and there would be weeks of gray rain before it finally decided to snow.

I look down at myself, but I don't need to. I can feel it. My hot blood is pounding through my body, flooding capillaries and lighting up cells like Fourth of July fireworks. I can feel the elation of every atom in my flesh, brimming with gratitude for the second chance they never expected to get. The chance to start over, to live right, to love right, to burn up in a fiery cloud and never again be buried in the mud. I kiss Julie to hide the fact that I'm blushing. My face is bright red and hot enough to melt steel. Okay, corpse, a voice in my head says, and I feel a twitch in my belly, more like a gentle nudge than a kick. I'm going now. I'm sorry I couldn't be here for your battle; I was fighting my own. But we won, right? I can feel it. There's a shiver in our legs, a tremor like the Earth speeding up, spinning off into uncharted orbits. Scary, isn't it? But what wonderful thing didn't start out scary? I don't know what the next page is for you, but whatever it is for me I swear I'm not going to fuck it up. I'm not going to yawn off in the middle of a sentence and hide it in a drawer. Not this time. Peel off these dusty wool blankets of apathy and antipathy and cynical desiccation. I want life in all its stupid sticky rawness. Okay. Okay, R. Here it comes.

As long as I can hear the sweet melody of your words, I need not; The angel’s secret, to be whispered in my ears As long as I can lace your silky fingers round my own, I need not; Pretty diamonds, nor big cash nor gold As long as I can watch the handsome sunshine of your face, I need not; Open skies, nor snowfall, nor the rain As long as I can gaze into the emeralds of your eyes, I need not; New colors, new wings or paradise As long as I can feel the tender tickle of your breath, I need not; The drifting wind, nor its call, nor caress As long as I can feel your soft lips upon mine, I need not; Melted sugar, nor the most expensive of wines As long as I can feel your warm body close to me I need not; A blanket, nor a bonfire's luxury As long as I can see you every morning I wake, I need not; A mirror, nor a cloud, nor shade As long as I can keep you in every petal of memories I need not: Dreams, nor desires, nor fantasies And as long as I can hold you in every moment that I breathe, I need not; Oxygen, nor blood, nor heartbeats.

Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. Boundary construction is most evident in three-year-olds. By this time, they should have mastered the following tasks: 1. The ability to be emotionally attached to others, yet without giving up a sense of self and one‘s freedom to be apart, 2. The ability to say appropriate no's to others without fear of loss of love, 3. The ability to take appropriate no's from others without withdrawing emotionally. Noting these tasks, a friend said half-joking, "They need to learn this by age three? How about by fourty-three?" Yes, these are tall orders but boundary development is essential in the early years of life.

A new beginning done right," she said out loud, because everyone knew that saying it out loud made it true. "You hear that, karma?" She glanced upward through her slightly leaky sunroof into a dark sky, where storm clouds tumbled together like a dryer full of gray wool blankets. "This time, I'm gong to be strong." Like Katharine Hepburn. Like Ingrid Bergman ."So go torture someone else and leave me alone." A bolt of lightning blinded her, followed by a boom of thunder that nearly had her jerking out of her skin. "Okay, so I meant pretty please leave me alone." -Maddie

The sky was a blanket of grey, tarmac-coloured clouds with no hint of the blue beyond them.

The moon slipped under a blanket of clouds

All day the blanket snapped and swelled on the line, roused by a hot spring wind.... From there it witnessed the first sparrow, early flies lifting their sticky feet, and a green haze on the south-sloping hills. Clouds rose over the mountain....At dusk I took the blanket in, and we slept, restless, under its fragrant weight.

You didn't have to know Pilu for long to see that he floated through life like a coconut on the ocean. He always bobbed up. There was some sort of natural spring of cheerfulness that bubbled to the surface. Sadness was like a cloud across the sun, soon past. Sorrow was tucked away somewhere in his head, locked up in a cage with a blanket over it, like the captain's parrot.

She feels a splash of water on her hand and, turning, sees that the sky has become overcast with a blanket of ominous dark rose-colored cloud, and of a sudden the light fades from the lawn and the cedars. Steerpike, who is on his way back to the Earl's bedroom, stops a moment at a staircase window to see the first decent of the rain. It is falling from the sky in long, upright, and seemingly motionless lines of rosy silver that stand rigidly upon the ground as though there were a million harp strings strung vertically between the solids of earth and sky.

Time passed, unknowable amounts and I had no sense for it. There was just the blanket and grass, the cold of rain and the heat of Lilly like a small sun beside me, and we lay there until the clouds left and the SimStars reappeared.

Thinking! Thinking! The process should no longer be merely this feeble flurry of hailstones that raises a little dust. It should be something quite different. Thinking should be a terrifying process. When the earth thinks, whole towns crumble to the ground and thousands of people die. Thinking: raising boulders, hollowing out valleys, preparing tidal waves at sea. Thinking like a town: that's to say: eight million inhabitants, twelve million rats, nine million pints of carbon dioxide, two billion tons. Grey light. Cathedral of light. Din. Sudden flashes. Low-lying blanket of black cloud. Flat roofs. Fire alarms. Elevators. Streets. Eighteen thousand miles of streets. 145 million electric light bulbs.

Some women wear a miniskirt to reveal their thighs; some wear one to conceal their age.

I’m drinking a glass of water in the empty hotel bar at the Principe di Savoia and staring at the mural behind the bar and in the mural there is a giant mountain, a vast field spread out below it where villagers are celebrating in a field of long grass that blankets the mountain dotted with tall white flowers, and in the sky above the mountain it’s morning and the sun is spreading itself across the mural’s frame, burning over the small cliffs and the low-hanging clouds that encircle the mountain’s peak, and a bridge strung across a path through the mountain will take you to any point beyond that you need to arrive at, because behind that mountain is a highway and along that highway are billboards with answers on them – who, what, where, when, why – and I’m falling forward but also moving up toward the mountain, my shadow looming against its jagged peaks, and I’m surging forward, ascending, sailing through dark clouds, rising up, a fiery wind propelling me, and soon it’s night and stars hang in the sky above the mountain revolving as they burn. The stars are real. The future is that mountain.

The outside world might have finally turned into autumn, but inside the Waverley house it still smelled of summer. It was lemon verbena day, so the house was filled with a sweet-tart that conjured images of picnic blankets and white clouds like true-love hearts.

Imagine a vast and glittering ocean seen from a great height. It stretches to the clear curved limit of every angle of horizon, the sun burning on a billion tiny wavelets. Now imagine a smooth blanket of cloud above the ocean, a shell of black velvet suspended high above the water and also extending to the horizon, but keep the sparkle of the sea despite the lack of sun. Add to the cloud many sharp and tiny lights, scattered on the base of the inky overcast like glinting eyes: singly, in pairs or in larger groups, each positioned far, far away from any other set.

One night he sits up. In cots around him are a few dozen sick or wounded. A warm September wind pours across the countryside and sets the walls of the tent rippling. Werner’s head swivels lightly on his neck. The wind is strong and gusting stronger, and the corners of the tent strain against their guy ropes, and where the flaps at the two ends come up, he can see trees buck and sway. Everything rustles. Werner zips his old notebook and the little house into his duffel and the man beside him murmurs questions to himself and the rest of the ruined company sleeps. Even Werner’s thirst has faded. He feels only the raw, impassive surge of the moonlight as it strikes the tent above him and scatters. Out there, through the open flaps of the tent, clouds hurtle above treetops. Toward Germany, toward home. Silver and blue, blue and silver. Sheets of paper tumble down the rows of cots, and in Werner’s chest comes a quickening. He sees Frau Elena kneel beside the coal stove and bank up the fire. Children in their beds. Baby Jutta sleeps in her cradle. His father lights a lamp, steps into an elevator, and disappears. The voice of Volkheimer: What you could be. Werner’s body seems to have gone weightless under his blanket, and beyond the flapping tent doors, the trees dance and the clouds keep up their huge billowing march, and he swings first one leg and then the other off the edge of the bed. “Ernst,” says the man beside him. “Ernst.” But there is no Ernst; the men in the cots do not reply; the American soldier at the door of the tent sleeps. Werner walks past him into the grass. The wind moves through his undershirt. He is a kite, a balloon. Once, he and Jutta built a little sailboat from scraps of wood and carried it to the river. Jutta painted the vessel in ecstatic purples and greens, and she set it on the water with great formality. But the boat sagged as soon as the current got hold of it. It floated downstream, out of reach, and the flat black water swallowed it. Jutta blinked at Werner with wet eyes, pulling at the battered loops of yarn in her sweater. “It’s all right,” he told her. “Things hardly ever work on the first try. We’ll make another, a better one.” Did they? He hopes they did. He seems to remember a little boat—a more seaworthy one—gliding down a river. It sailed around a bend and left them behind. Didn’t it? The moonlight shines and billows; the broken clouds scud above the trees. Leaves fly everywhere. But the moonlight stays unmoved by the wind, passing through clouds, through air, in what seems to Werner like impossibly slow, imperturbable rays. They hang across the buckling grass. Why doesn’t the wind move the light? Across the field, an American watches a boy leave the sick tent and move against the background of the trees. He sits up. He raises his hand. “Stop,” he calls. “Halt,” he calls. But Werner has crossed the edge of the field, where he steps on a trigger land mine set there by his own army three months before, and disappears in a fountain of earth.

But there really ought to be a film of all this: closeups of pure shit. Horizon bald as a baby's bottom, a couple of clouds - and that's it. Then they could film the inside of the boat: moldy bread, filthy necks, rotten lemons, torn shirts, sweaty blankets, and, as a grand finale, all of us looking utterly pissed-off.

Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket. I wish I could see in the dark, better than I do.

My Dearest, I miss you, my darling, as I always do, but today is especially hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together. I can almost feel you beside me as I write this letter, and I can smell the scent of wildflowers that always reminds me of you. But at this moment, these things give me no pleasure. Your visits have been coming less often, and I feel sometimes as if the greatest part of who I am is slowly slipping away. I am trying, though. At night when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me. Last night, in my dreams, I saw you on the pier near Wrightsville Beach. The wind was blowing through your hair, and your eyes held the fading sunlight. I am struck as I see you leaning against the rail. You are beautiful, I think as I see you, a vision that I can never find in anyone else. I slowly begin to walk toward you, and when you finally turn to me, I notice that others have been watching you as well. “Do you know her?” they ask me in jealous whispers, and as you smile at me, I simply answer with the truth. “Better than my own heart.” I stop when I reach you and take you in my arms. I long for this moment more than any other. It is what I live for, and when you return my embrace, I give myself over to this moment, at peace once again. I raise my hand and gently touch your cheek and you tilt your head and close your eyes. My hands are hard and your skin is soft, and I wonder for a moment if you’ll pull back, but of course you don’t. You never have, and it is at times like this that I know what my purpose is in life. I am here to love you, to hold you in my arms, to protect you. I am here to learn from you and to receive your love in return. I am here because there is no other place to be. But then, as always, the mist starts to form as we stand close to one another. It is a distant fog that rises from the horizon, and I find that I grow fearful as it approaches. It slowly creeps in, enveloping the world around us, fencing us in as if to prevent escape. Like a rolling cloud, it blankets everything, closing, until there is nothing left but the two of us. I feel my throat begin to close and my eyes well up with tears because I know it is time for you to go. The look you give me at that moment haunts me. I feel your sadness and my own loneliness, and the ache in my heart that had been silent for only a short time grows stronger as you release me. And then you spread your arms and step back into the fog because it is your place and not mine. I long to go with you, but your only response is to shake your head because we both know that is impossible. And I watch with breaking heart as you slowly fade away. I find myself straining to remember everything about this moment, everything about you. But soon, always too soon, your image vanishes and the fog rolls back to its faraway place and I am alone on the pier and I do not care what others think as I bow my head and cry and cry and cry.

Blue Planet Phenomenon. she’s from the pink planet called Constellation he’s from the dark planet beyond under a constant monitor no love a interplanetary phenomenon he’s an interstellar she’s studying astronomy what they have seen sets in motion their biology they will meet on the blue planet they should know better it’s death if they get together interplanetary love is forbidden their passion keep it hidden they should know better but they must be together to the blue planet love velocity interstellar crossing Earth’s longitudes hiding their love in the new years eve multitudes they should know better their love still not allowed under another planets blanketing cloud Planet Earth in unified love new years eve blue planet phenomenon she will fall pregnant their baby conceived at a time of human unity their unborn baby and united humanity become one in harmony interstellar before they’re discovered too late their love uncovered they should know better it’s death for forbidden love together trial on dark planet they will all die today “kill them now” judgment say they plea for their unborn baby’s mercy a reprieve child leniency only for their baby clemency “bring on the birth” authorities say a unpredicted baby delivery conceived in a time of human unity a love descendant of humanity interstellar love racing interplanetary embracing human love emanating from their newborn baby blanketing pink planet with love blanketing dark planet with love two planets authority depleting two planets a love meeting now love not forbidden love never to be hidden interstellar love plea she and he with their baby to go free By R.M.Romarney.

ANCIENT AIR (39) I climb up high and look on the four seas, Heaven and earth spreading out so far. Frost blankets all the stuff of autumn, The wind blows with the great desert's cold. The eastward-flowing water is immense, All the ten thousand things billow. The white sun's passing brightness fades, Floating clouds seem to have no end. Swallows and sparrows nest in the wutong tree, Yuan and luan birds perch among jujube thorns. Now it's time to head on back again, I flick my sword and sing 'Taking the Hard Road'.

We inherit every one of our genes, but we leave the womb without a single microbe. As we pass through our mother's birth canal, we begin to attract entire colonies of bacteria. By the time a child can crawl, he has been blanketed by an enormous, unseen cloud of microorganisms--a hundred trillion or more. They are bacteria, mostly, but also viruses and fungi (including a variety of yeasts), and they come at us from all directions: other people, food, furniture, clothing, cars, buildings, trees, pets, even the air we breathe. They congregate in our digestive systems and our mouths, fill the space between our teeth, cover our skin, and line our throats. We are inhabited by as many as ten thousand bacterial species; those cells outnumber those which we consider our own by ten to one, and weigh, all told, about three pounds--the same as our brain. Together, they are referred to as our microbiome--and they play such a crucial role in our lives that scientists like [Martin J.] Blaser have begun to reconsider what it means to be human.

A blanket of herring clouds was rolling in from the east.

The cloud cover made for a terrible blanket.


I leaned way back to gaze at the blanket of blue sky where a few small clouds hung, white as the fleece of a new lamb. “Even out on the ocean,” Bill said, “Father Sky will be above us. We will never be forgotten by the sky.

Lamium Migraine dreams, jagged seams, A badge of love and pain. Or dreamy eyes, sleepy eyes, Drooping, closing, losing light. Packages scattered under the tree, Some torn open, some tied tight. Is there a heartbeat in those purple veins? Are those embryos or mouths or rosary beads? The color of my first dress, gathered with love, Fairy cups stirred with blades of grass, notes clustered on a windy score, Three blooms, three friends, alas! Grape flowers, cloud flowers, love flowers, Paper parasols upside down, a butterfly herd Stopped to rest by a deep green pool. Petals small as a child's tears good-bye, Dropped stitches everywhere From a blanket the color of sky.

I grew up around people who were distrustful of science, who thought of it as a cunning trick to rob them of their faith, and I have been educated around scientists and laypeople alike who talk about religion as though it were a comfort blanket for the dumb and the weak, a way to extol the virtues of a God more improbable than our own human existence. But this tension, this idea that one must necessarily choose between science and religion, is false. I used to see the world through a God lens, and when that lens clouded, I turned to science. Both became, for me, valuable ways of seeing, but ultimately both have failed to fully satisfy in their aim: to make clear, to make meaning.

For three weeks it had rained every day. For those past three weeks, daybreak was a gloomy affair. The skies gradually moved from a thick blanket of dingy white clouds to the deepest shade of grey, peaking here and there in ominous black thunderheads

They growled a response and went on digging. For some time there was no noise but the grating sound of the spades discharging their freight of mould and gravel. It was very monotonous. Finally a spade struck upon the coffin with a dull woody accent, and within another minute or two the men had hoisted it out on the ground. They pried off the lid with their shovels, got out the body and dumped it rudely on the ground. The moon drifted from behind the clouds and exposed the pallid face. The barrow was got ready and the corpse placed on it, covered with a blanket, and bound to its place with the rope. Potter took out a large spring-knife and cut off the dangling end of the rope and then said: “Now the cussed thing’s ready, Sawbones, and you’ll just out with another five, or here she stays.

To You" What is more beautiful than night and someone in your arms that’s what we love about art it seems to prefer us and stays if the moon or a gasping candle sheds a little light or even dark you become a landscape in a landscape with rocks and craggy mountains and valleys full of sweaty ferns breathing and lifting into the clouds which have actually come low as a blanket of aspirations’ blue for once not a melancholy color because it is looking back at us there’s no need for vistas we are one in the complicated foreground of space the architects are most courageous because it stands for all to see and for a long long time just as the words “I’ll always love you" impulsively appear in the dark sky and we are happy and stick by them like a couple of painters in neon allowing the light to glow there over the river

In Views of Nature Humboldt showed how nature could have an influence on people’s imagination. Nature, he wrote, was in a mysterious communication with our ‘inner feelings’. A clear blue sky, for example, triggers different emotions than a heavy blanket of dark clouds. Tropical scenery, densely filled with banana and palm trees, has a different effect than an open forest of white-stemmed slender birches. What we might take for granted today – that there is a correlation between the external world and our mood – was a revelation to Humboldt’s readers. Poets had engaged with such ideas but never a scientist.

It was early autumn, then, before the snow began to fly. –(There’s an expression for you, born in the country, born from the imaginations of men and their feeling for the right word, the only word, to mirror clearly what they see! Those with few words must know how to use them.) Men who have seen it, who have watched it day by day outside their cabin window coming down from the sky, like the visible remorse of an ageing year; who have watched it bead upon the ears of the horses they rode, muffle the sound of hoofs on the trail, lie upon spruce boughs and over grass – cover, as if forever, the landscape in which they moved, round off the mountains, blanket the ice in the rivers – for them the snow flies. The snow doesn’t fall. It may ride the wind. It may descend slowly, in utter quiet, from the grey and laden clouds, so that you can hear the flakes touching lightly on the wide white waste, as they come to rest at the end of their flight. Flight – that’s the word. They beat in the air like wings, as if reluctant ever to touch the ground. I have observed them coming down, on a very cold day, near its end when the sky above me was still blue, in flakes great and wide as the palm of my hand. They were like immense moths winging down in the twilight, making the silence about me visible.

Thomas Hudson had gone in there to fill water, the dogs from the shacks were huddled with the pigs that had burrowed in the mud and dogs and pigs both were gray from the solid blanket of mosquitoes that covered them. It was a wonderful key when the east wind blew day and night and you could walk two days with a gun and be in good country. It was country as unspoiled as when Columbus came to this coast. Then, when the wind dropped, the mosquitoes came in clouds from the marshes. To say they came in clouds, he thought, is not a metaphor. They truly came in clouds and they could bleed a man to death. The people we are searching for would not have stopped in Romano. Not with this calm. They must have gone further up the coast.

Once I sat down in the bathtub, a blanket of bubbles covered me and I allowed myself to fully relax. My aching body from days of pedaling all over the place thanked me. The water was a little too hot, but I didn’t care. As I slunk down, resting my head against the blue bath pillow, cloud-like tufts of bubbles rose upward and attached themselves to my shoulders and hair.

The infamous South Col awaited me over the top. I longed to see this place I had heard and read so much about. The highest camp in the world at twenty-six thousand feet--deep in Everest’s Death Zone. I had always winced at the term Death Zone. Mountaineers are renowned for playing things down, yet mountaineers had coined the phrase--I didn’t like that. I put the thought aside, pulled the last few steps over the spur, and the gradient eased. I turned around and swore that I could see halfway around the world. A think blanket of cloud was moving in beneath me, obscuring the lower faces of the mountain. But above these, I could see a vast horizon of dark blue panned out before me. Adrenaline filled my tired limbs, and I started to move once more. I knew I was entering another world.

Here, There Are Blueberries When I see the bright clouds, a sky empty of moon and stars, I wonder what I am, that anyone should note me. Here there are blueberries, what should I fear? Here there is bread in thick slices, of whom should I be afraid? Under the swelling clouds, we spread our blankets. Here in this meadow, we open our baskets to unpack blueberries, whole bowls of them, berries not by the work of our hands, berries not by the work of our fingers. What taste the bright world has, whole fields without wires, the blackened moss, the clouds swelling at the edge of the meadow. And for this, I did nothing, not even wonder. You must live for something, they say. People don't live just to keep on living. But here is the quince tree, a sky bright and empty. Here there are blueberries, there is no need to note me.

Anger had its place in battle. It blanketed your fears, overcame your nerves, and drove many a soldier to a feat of bravery or sacrifice which could turn the tide. In the front line, controlled, contained, and well-utilised anger was as much a weapon as a spear or sword. In a leader, it was nothing but a hindrance. Anger clouded thoughts, narrowed vision, and blinded you to the truth by overwhelming you with lies and your greatest fears.

Night falls. Or has fallen. Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket.

When I feel lonely, I scroll through Tinder and remind myself what I’m missing. Which is dudes with coconut-oiled beards all posing next to the same graffitied wall in Dumbo with profiles written entirely in emojis. And I remember that I’m not lonely. I’m alone. When I’m comatose from writing and mothering, when I’m hurting too badly to cook, talk, or smile, I curl up with ‘alone’ like a security blanket. Alone doesn’t care that I don’t shave my legs in the winter. Alone never gets disappointed by me.” Eva sighed. “It’s the best relationship I’ve ever been in.” “Are you speaking metaphorically,” asked Cece, “or are you dating a man named Alone?” “You can’t be serious.” “My doorman is a SoundCloud rapper named Sincere. One never knows.” “I like being single,” Eva continued quietly. “I don’t want anyone to have to really see me.” They sat in silence, Eva idly snapping the rubber band on her wrist.

Why is it that night falls, instead of rising, like the dawn? Yet if you look east, at sunset, you can see night rising, not falling; darkness lifting into the sky, up from the horizon, like a black sun behind cloud cover. Like smoke from an unseen fire, a line of fire just below the horizon, brushfire or a burning city. Maybe night falls because it’s heavy, a thick curtain pulled up over the eyes. Wool blanket. I wish I could see in the dark, better than I do.

Clamor is prohibited in the Cloud Recesses,” Lan Wangji stated. “Then scream for help quietly,” Wei Wuxian said. “Also, when I tear off your clothes, do your very best to keep me at bay. Cover and protect your chest for dear life. Don’t let me tear off anything.” There was momentary silence from under the blanket. “That sounds complicated,” said Lan Wangji, at last. “That’s complicated?!” Wei Wuxian blurted. “Mn,” Lan Wangji affirmed. “Nothing for it, then,” Wei Wuxian said. “Let’s switch. You can rape me instead—

they were always depicted being on clouds, but she had chucked it up to a gross misunderstanding on behalf of humankind. Or perhaps a blanket lack of creativity. Never had she suspected that it was actually truth until the Jade Emperor had kindly pointed her to the cloud near him and invited her to take a seat. The only complaint that she had was that it felt a little airy, like wind was passing underneath her buttocks. Other than that, it was remarkably comfortable. It made the inventor in her wonder how she could duplicate it. Surely there was a way.

Job’s account of creation tells us that after God “laid the earth’s foundation” he “made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness” (38:4, 9). The pronouns “its” and “it” here refer to the vast sea that covered the entire surface of Earth at the time. Job leaves no room for ambiguity. Darkness initially pervades the surface of the deep (Gen. 1:2) not because the sun and stars hadn’t yet been created, but rather because Earth’s primordial atmosphere was like a thick blanket that prevented light from penetrating to the surface of Earth’s waters.

A brick could be used to show you how to live a richer, fuller, more satisfying life. Don’t you want to have fulfillment and meaning saturating your existence? I can show you how you can achieve this and so much more with just a simple brick. For just $99.99—not even an even hundred bucks, I’ll send you my exclusive life philosophy that’s built around a brick. Man’s used bricks to build houses for centuries. Now let one man, me, show you how a brick can be used to build your life up bigger and stronger than you ever imagined. But act now, because supplies are limited. This amazing offer won’t last forever. You don’t want to wake up in ten years to find yourself divorced, homeless, and missing your testicles because you waited even two hours too long to obtain this information. Become a hero today—save your life. Procrastination is only for the painful things in life. We prolong the boring, but why put off for tomorrow the exciting life you could be living today? If you’re not satisfied with the information I’m providing, I’m willing to offer you a no money back guarantee. That’s right, you read that wrong. If you are not 100% dissatisfied with my product, I’ll give you your money back. For $99.99 I’m offering 99.99%, but you’ve got to be willing to penny up that percentage to 100. Why delay? The life you really want is mine, and I’m willing to give it to you—for a price. That price is a one-time fee of $99.99, which of course everyone can afford—even if they can’t afford it. Homeless people can’t afford it, but they’re the people who need my product the most. Buy my product, or face the fact that in all probability you are going to end up homeless and sexless and unloved and filthy and stinky and probably even disabled, if not physically than certainly mentally. I don’t care if your testicles taste like peanut butter—if you don’t buy my product, even a dog won’t lick your balls you miserable cur. I curse you! God damn it, what are you, slow? Pay me my money so I can show you the path to true wealth. Don’t you want to be rich? Everything takes money—your marriage, your mortgage, and even prostitutes. I can show you the path to prostitution—and it starts by ignoring my pleas to help you. I’m not the bad guy here. I just want to help. You have some serious trust issues, my friend. I have the chance to earn your trust, and all it’s going to cost you is a measly $99.99. Would it help you to trust me if I told you that I trust you? Well, I do. Sure, I trust you. I trust you to make the smart decision for your life and order my product today. Don’t sleep on this decision, because you’ll only wake up in eight hours to find yourself living in a miserable future. And the future indeed looks bleak, my friend. War, famine, children forced to pimp out their parents just to feed the dog. Is this the kind of tomorrow you’d like to live in today? I can show you how to provide enough dog food to feed your grandpa for decades. In the future I’m offering you, your wife isn’t a whore that you sell for a knife swipe of peanut butter because you’re so hungry you actually considered eating your children. Become a hero—and save your kids’ lives. Your wife doesn’t want to spread her legs for strangers. Or maybe she does, and that was a bad example. Still, the principle stands. But you won’t be standing—in the future. Remember, you’ll be confined to a wheelchair. Mushrooms are for pizzas, not clouds, but without me, your life will atom bomb into oblivion. Nobody’s dropping a bomb while I’m around. The only thing I’m dropping is the price. Boom! I just lowered the price for you, just to show you that you are a valued customer. As a VIP, your new price on my product is just $99.96. That’s a savings of over two pennies (three, to be precise). And I’ll even throw in a jar of peanut butter for free. That’s a value of over $.99. But wait, there’s more! If you call within the next ten minutes, I’ll even throw in a blanket free of charge. . .

He hiked up into the mountains. The season had gone before, some trees gone barren, none still green. He spent the night on a ledge above the river and all night he could hear the ghosts of lumber trains, a liquid clicking and long shunt and clatter and the jargon of old rusted trucks on rails long gone. The first few dawns half made him nauseous, he'd not seen one dead sober for so long. He sat in the cold gray light and watched, mummied up in his blanket. A small wind blew. A rack of clouds troweled across the east grew mauve and yellow and the sun came boring up. He was moved by the utter silence of it. He turned his back to the warmth. Yellow leaves were falling all through the forest and the river was filled with them, shuttling and winking, golden leaves that rushed like poured coins in the tailwater. A perishable currency, forever renewed. In an old grandfather time a ballad transpired here, some love gone wrong and a sabletressed girl drowned in an icegreen pool where she was found with her hair spreading like ink on the cold and cobbled river floor. Ebbing in her bindings, languorous as a sea dream. Looking up with eyes made huge by the water at the bellies of trout and the well of the rimpled world beyond.

Beneath his big white eyebrows Father’s eyes shine. He bundles her beneath an aeroponic table, crawls in beside her, and asks Sybil to dim the lights (plants eat light, Father says, but even plants can overeat). She pulls her blanket to her chin, and presses her head against her father’s chest as shadows fall over the room, and listens to his heart thrum inside his worksuit, and to conduits hum inside the walls, and to water drip from the long white threads of thousands of rootlets, down through the tiers of plants, into channels beneath the floor where it is collected to be resprayed once more, and the Argos hurtles another ten thousand kilometers through the emptiness.

Risking a glance at the dignified young man beside her- what was his name?- Mr. Arthurson, Arterton?- Pandora decided to try her hand at some small talk. "It was very fine weather today, wasn't it?" she said. He set down his flatware and dabbed at both corners of his mouth with his napkin before replying. "Yes, quite fine." Encouraged, Pandora asked, "What kind of clouds do you like better- cumulus or stratocumulus?" He regarded her with a slight frown. After a long pause, he asked, "What is the difference?" "Well, cumulus are the fluffier, rounder clouds, like this heap of potatoes on my plate." Using her fork, Pandora spread, swirled, and dabbed the potatoes. "Stratocumulus are flatter and can form lines or waves- like this- and can either form a large mass or break into smaller pieces." He was expressionless as he watched her. "I prefer flat clouds that look like a blanket." "Altostratus?" Pandora asked in surprise, setting down her fork. "But those are the boring clouds. Why do you like them?" "They usually mean it's going to rain. I like rain." This showed promise of actually turning into a conversation. "I like to walk in the rain, too," Pandora exclaimed. "No, I don't like to walk in it. I like to stay in the house." After casting a disapproving glance at her plate, the man returned his attention to eating. Chastened, Pandora let out a noiseless sigh. Picking up her fork, she tried to inconspicuously push her potatoes into a proper heap again. Fact #64 Never sculpt your food to illustrate a point during small talk. Men don't like it. As Pandora looked up, she discovered Phoebe's gaze on her. She braced inwardly for a sarcastic remark. But Phoebe's voice was gentle as she spoke. "Henry and I once saw a cloud over the English Channel that was shaped in a perfect cylinder. It went on as far as the eye could see. Like someone had rolled up a great white carpet and set it in the sky." It was the first time Pandora had ever heard Phoebe mention her late husband's name. Tentatively, she asked, "Did you and he ever try to find shapes in the clouds?" "Oh, all the time. Henry was very clever- he could find dolphins, ships, elephants, and roosters. I could never see a shape until he pointed it out. But then it would appear as if by magic." Phoebe's gray eyes turned crystalline with infinite variations of tenderness and wistfulness. Although Pandora had experienced grief before, having lost both parents and a brother, she understood that this was a different kind of loss, a heavier weight of pain. Filled with compassion and sympathy, she dared to say, "He... he sounds like a lovely man." Phoebe smiled faintly, their gazes meeting in a moment of warm connection. "He was," she said. "Someday I'll tell you about him." And finally Pandora understood where a little small talk about the weather might lead.

I lay on the grasses in rolling fog, In yellow hayrattle and fairy flax, By the dusky moorland and blanket bog; The snipe chirps out her plaintive monologue, A skylark warbles while diving her tracks, I lay on the grasses in rolling fog; Sky continues his subtle dialogue, The sun recites hymns to the zodiacs, By the dusky moorland and blanket bog; The peaceful clouds roll by in epilogue Casting shadows of forgotten syntax, I lay on the grasses in rolling fog; The meadow hums in ancient analog, Oxeye daisies keep their secretive pacts By the dusky moorland and blanket bog; I need no other church or synagogue Within my particular parallax, I lay on the grasses in rolling fog By the dusky moorland and blanket bog.

And so began the second phase of my life, which our family referred to as Exile, with a capital “E.” For me it was a period of discovery. I’d spend the next nine years in that semi-uninhabited province in the south, which is now a tourist destination, a landscape of vast cold forests, snowy volcanoes, emerald lakes, and raging rivers, where anyone with a hook and line can fill a basket with trout, salmon, and turbot in under an hour. The wide skies were an ever-changing spectacle, a symphony of colors, clouds pulled quickly along by the wind, bands of wild geese, and sometimes the outline of a condor or eagle in majestic flight. Night there fell suddenly, like a black blanket embroidered with millions of lights, which I learned to identify by both their classical and indigenous names.

I Won’t Write Your Obituary You asked if you could call to say goodbye if you were ever really gonna kill yourself. Sure, but I won’t write your obituary. I’ll commission it from some dead-end journalist who will say things like: “At peace… Better place… Fought the good fight…” Maybe reference the loving embrace of Capital-G-God at least 4 times. Maybe quote Charles fucking Bukowski. And I won’t stop them because I won’t write your obituary. But if you call me, I will write you a new sky, one you can taste. I will write you a D-I-Y cloud maker so on days when you can’t do anything you can still make clouds in whatever shape you want them. I will write you letters, messages in bottles, in cages, in orange peels, in the distance between here and the moon, in forests and rivers and bird songs. I will write you songs. I can’t write music, but I’ll find Rihanna, and I’ll get her to write you music if it will make you want to dance a little longer. I will write you a body whose veins are electricity because outlets are easier to find than good shrinks, but we will find you a good shrink. I will write you 1-800-273-8255, that’s the suicide hotline; we can call it together. And yeah, you can call me, but I won’t tell you it’s okay, that I forgive you. I won’t say “goodbye” or “I love you” one last time. You won’t leave on good terms with me, Because I will not forgive you. I won’t read you your last rights, absolve you of sin, watch you sail away on a flaming viking ship, my hand glued to my forehead. I will not hold your hand steady around a gun. And after, I won’t come by to pick up the package of body parts you will have left specifically for me. I’ll get a call like “Ma’am, what would you have us do with them?” And I’ll say, “Burn them. Feed them to stray cats. Throw them at school children. Hurl them at the sea. I don’t care. I don’t want them.” I don’t want your heart. It’s not yours anymore, it’s just a heart now and I already have one. I don’t want your lungs, just deflated birthday party balloons that can’t breathe anymore. I don’t want a jar of your teeth as a memento. I don’t want your ripped off skin, a blanket to wrap myself in when I need to feel like your still here. You won’t be there. There’s no blood there, there’s no life there, there’s no you there. I want you. And I will write you so many fucking dead friend poems, that people will confuse my tongue with your tombstone and try to plant daisies in my throat before I ever write you an obituary while you’re still fucking here. So the answer to your question is “yes”. If you’re ever really gonna kill yourself, yes, please, call me.

Given their relationship with the locals and their general enthusiasm level, Doherty and Byrne had been assigned to go through a bazillion hours of closed-circuit TV footage, looking for regular unexplained visitors to Glenskehy, but the cameras hadn’t been positioned with this in mind and the best they could come up with was that they were fairly sure no one had driven into or out of Glenskehy by a direct route between ten and two on the night of the murder. This made Sam start talking about the housemates again, which made Frank point out the multiple ways someone could have got to Glenskehy without being picked up on CCTV, which made Byrne get snippy about suits who swanned down from Dublin and wasted everyone’s time with pointless busywork. I got the sense that the incident room was blanketed by a dense, electric cloud of dead ends and turf wars and that nasty sinking feeling.

Of all the plants, trees have the largest surface area covered in leaves. For every square yard of forest, 27 square yards of leaves and needles blanket the crowns. Part of every rainfall is intercepted in the canopy and immediately evaporates again. In addition, each summer, trees use up to 8,500 cubic yards of water per square mile, which they release into the air through transpiration. This water vapor creates new clouds that travel farther inland to release their rain. As the cycle continues, water reaches even the most remote areas. This water pump works so well that the downpours in some large areas of the world, such as the Amazon basin, are almost as heavy thousands of miles inland as they are on the coast. There are a few requirements for the pump to work: from the ocean to the farthest corner, there must be forest. And, most importantly, the coastal forests are the foundations for this system. If they do not exist, the system falls apart. Scientists credit Anastassia Makarieva from Saint Petersburg in Russia for the discovery of these unbelievably important connections. They studied different forests around the world and everywhere the results were the same. It didn't matter if they were studying a rain forest or the Siberian taiga, it was always the trees that were transferring life-giving moisture into land-locked interiors. Researchers also discovered that the whole process breaks down if coastal forests are cleared. It's a bit like if you were using an electrical pump to distribute water and you pulled the intake pipe out of the pond. The fallout is already apparent in Brazil, where the Amazonian rain forest is steadily drying out. Central Europe is within the 400-mile zone and, therefore, close enough to the intake area. Thankfully, there are still forests here, even if they are greatly diminished.

I prop my guitar up against the nightstand. Then I turn toward the bed and fall into it face first. The mattress is soft but firm, like a sheet of steel wrapped in a cloud. I roll around, moaning loud and long. “Oh, that’s good. Really, really good. What a grand bed!” Sarah clears her throat. “Well. We should probably get to sleep, then. Big day tomorrow.” The pillow smells sweet, like candy. I can only imagine it’s from her. I wonder if I pressed my nose to the crook of her neck, would her skin smell as delicious? I brush away the thought as I watch her stiffly gather a pillow and blanket from the other side of the bed, dragging them to . . . the nook. “What are you doing?” She looks up, her doe eyes widening. “Getting ready for bed.” “You’re going to sleep there?” “Of course. The sofa’s very uncomfortable.” “Why can’t we share the bed?” She chokes . . . stutters. “I . . . I can’t sleep with you. I don’t even know you.” I throw my arms out wide. “What do you want to know? Ask me anything—I’m an open book.” “That’s not what I mean.” “You’re being ridiculous! It’s a huge bed. You could let one rip and I wouldn’t hear it.” And the blush is back. With a vengeance. “I’m not . . . I don’t . . .” “You don’t fart?” I scoff. “Really? Are you not human?” She curses under her breath, but I’d love to hear it out loud. I bet uninhibited Sarah Von Titebottum would be a stunning sight. And very entertaining. She shakes her head, pinning me with her eyes. “There’s something wrong with you.” “No.” I explain calmly, “I’m just free. Honest with myself and others. You should try it sometime.” She folds her arms, all tight, trembling indignation. It’s adorable. “I’m sleeping in the nook, Your Highness. And that’s that.” I sit up, pinning her gaze right back at her. “Henry.” “What?” “My name is not Highness, it’s fucking Henry, and I’d prefer you use it.” And she snaps. “Fine! Fucking Henry—happy?” I smile. “Yes. Yes, I am.” I flop back on the magnificent bed. “Sleep tight, Titebottum.” I think she growls at me, but it’s muffled by the sound of rustling bed linens and pillows. And then . . . there’s silence. Beautiful, blessed silence. I wiggle around, getting comfy. I turn on my side and fluff the pillow. I squeeze my eyes tight . . . but it’s hopeless. “Fucking hell!” I sit up. And Sarah springs to her feet. “What? What’s wrong?” It’s the guilt. I’ve barged into this poor girl’s room, confiscated her bed, and have forced her to sleep in a cranny in the wall. I may not be the man my father was or the gentleman my brother is, but I’m not that much of a prick. I stand up, rip my shirt over my head. and march toward the window seat. I feel Sarah’s eyes graze my bare chest, arms. and stomach, but she circles around me, keeping her distance. “You take the bloody bed,” I tell her. “I’ll sleep in the bloody nook.” “You don’t have to do that.” I push my hand through my hair. “Yes, I do.” Then I stand up straight and proper, an impersonation of Hugh Grant in one of his classic royal roles. “Please, Lady Sarah.” She blinks, her little mouth pursed. “Okay.” Then she climbs onto the bed, under the covers. And I squeeze onto the window bench, knees bent, my elbow jammed against the icy windowpane, and my neck bent at an odd angle that I’m going to be feeling tomorrow. The light is turned down to a very low dim, and for several moments all I hear is Sarah’s soft breaths. But then, in the near darkness, her delicate voice floats out on a sigh. “All right, we can sleep in the bed together.” Music to my ears. I don’t make her tell me twice—I’ve fulfilled my noble quota for the evening. I stumble from the nook and crash onto the bed. That’s better.

We continually remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our LORD Jesus Christ. 1 THESSALONIANS 1:3 OCTOBER 9 To be a true optimist, you have to be rugged and tough in mind. An optimist is a person who believes in a good outcome even when he can’t yet see it. He is a person who believes in a greater day when there is yet no evidence of it. He is one who believes in his own future when he can’t see much possibility in it. A lot of people live under a cloud. But up above the clouds, the sun is always shining. Down here, on the surface of the earth, groping around in the shadows under a low ceiling, a person may not feel optimistic. But you ought to begin to practice optimism. Send up into the mass of dark clouds bright, powerful optimistic thoughts, a bright optimistic faith. By so doing, you can actually dissipate the clouds and have an entirely different life. Constantly send up into the overcast sky that is blanketing your mind bright thoughts of faith, love, hope, thoughts of God, thoughts about the greatness of life.

Loneliness covers the earth like a blanket. It flows in the stream down through the Callows to the lake. It's in the muck in the yard and the briars in the haggard and the empty outbuildings are bursting with it. It runs down the walls inside of the house like tears and grows on the walls outside like a poisonous choking weed. It's in the sky and the stones and the clouds and the grass. The air is thick with it: you breath it into your lungs and you feel like it might suffocate you. It runs into hollow places like rainwater. It settles on the grass and on trees and takes their shapes and all the earth is wet with it. It has a smell, like the inside of a saucepan: scrapped metal, cold and sharp. When it hits you, it feels like a rap of a hurl across your knuckles on a frosty winter's morning. in PE: sharp, shocking pain, but inside you, so it can't be seen and no one says sorry for causing it nor asks are you ok, and no kind teacher wants to look at it and tut-tut and tell you you'll be grand, good lad. But you know if another man stood where you're standing and looked at the same things he wouldn't see it or feel it.

There were many skies. The sky was invaded by great white clouds, flat on the bottom but round and billowy on top. The sky was completely cloudless, of a blue quite shattering to the senses. The sky was a heavy, suffocating blanket of grey cloud, but without promise of rain. The sky was thinly overcast. The sky was dappled with small, white, fleecy clouds. The sky was streaked with high, thin clouds that looked like a cotton ball stretched a part. The sky was a featureless milky haze. The sky was a density of dark and blustery rain clouds that passed by without delivering rain. The sky was painted with a small number of flat clouds that looked like sandbars. The sky was a mere block to allow a visual effect on the horizon: sunlight flooding the ocean, the vertical edges of between light and shadow perfectly distinct. The sky was a distant black curtain of falling rain. The sky was many clouds at many levels, some thick and opaque, others looking like smoke. The sky was black and spitting on my smiling face. The sky was nothing but falling water, a ceaseless deluge that wrinkled and bloated my skin and froze me stiff.

There’s this girl…this woman I can’t get out of my mind.” He spilled the story of his seduction of sweet, innocent Amanda McCormick for Rufus’s examination. When he finished talking, there was another silence. “You did that?” Rufus’s voice was as deep and gravelly as a quarry. “Fucked some poor virgin while posing as her fiancé?” “Yeah.” “You got some balls. How’d you know you’d be a close enough match to this Baxter?” “Brown hair, blue eyes, that’s all she seemed to know about him.” Spence couldn’t explain his need for the rush of tempting fate. “I took a chance. It was a gamble.” “Jesus, you’re a mean son of a bitch.” “I didn’t want to hurt her. I was just having fun.” He sounded like a spoiled child even to himself. “And now you want to go see this woman and try to make it right?” Rufus said. “Just how the hell did you think you were going to fix it? By showing up and wrecking her marriage, if you haven’t done that already?” It was Spence’s turn to pause. “Haven’t you done enough to this lady? Where’s your head, boy? Leave her alone.” “I can’t. I have to see her again.” He didn’t want to share his dreams of the little girl. He’d sound crazy. Rufus laughed harshly. “So you can try and get another piece of tail?” “No. It’s not like that.” “What? You think you’re in love. Son, you don’t know the first thing about it. If you did, you’d be putting this woman’s needs above your own.” He thought of the little girl telling him to go to Amanda. “Maybe what she needs is me.” Rufus made a scoffing noise. “A woman needs a man who’ll stand by her, be there through hard times and good. From what you’ve told me these past months, this is the longest you’ve stayed put in one place in your life and that’s only ‘cause they won’t let you out.” “I just want to do the right thing.” “Then do like I say. Leave her be. You think she’s going to be happy to see you again?” Spence pulled his blanket tighter around his shoulders and watched a gray cloud puff from his mouth. “You still there, boy?” “Where else?” “Don’t take it too hard. Everybody does things they’re sorry for. Sometimes there’s just no way to make it right.” He leaned back against the wall and reviewed the stupid chain of events that had landed him in jail. Maybe Rufus was right and there was no way he could ever apologize for what he’d done to Amanda. He should let the whole thing slide and leave the woman in peace.

He opened her door, grabbed a quilt from the back of the truck, and pulled her toward the beach. When he found a spot covered with thick sand, he stopped and spread out the blanket. “It’s a little early for sunbathing,” she said. “I don’t remember you being so grumpy in the morning,” he teased. “I didn’t have time for coffee.” He lowered himself to the blanket and pulled her down in front of him. She settled against his chest, his warmth driving away the chill in the air. “Madam . . .” He handed her a thermos she hadn’t noticed before. “Oh, bless you.” She poured the hot brew into the lid, took a sip, and shared with him. Much better. The smell of the brew mingled with the tangy scent of sea air. The cool breeze fanned her skin, pushing her hair from her face, and the water lapped the pebbled shore. The clouds on the horizon were beginning to brighten, the black fading to dark hues of blue. A couple months ago she’d mentioned that she’d never watched a sunrise. He seemed intent on being there for all her firsts. The first time she rented a house. The first time she opened her own bank account. The first time she swam in the ocean. She embraced her freedom, and Beau was there, supporting her however he could.

Indeed, Newton confessed, “an evil heart of unbelief fills my sky with many clouds.”73 This lack of trust in God “is the primary cause of all our inquietude.”74 Newton prayed hard against the unbelief in his heart: “For this I sigh and long, and cry to the Lord to rend the veil of unbelief, scatter the clouds of ignorance, and break down the walls which sin is daily building up to hide him from my eyes.”75 Yet in our pride we hold tightly to our cares and open ourselves to spiritual attack (1 Pet. 5:6–8). We pull anxiety close like a blanket, so close that we cover our faces and cloud our souls from the victory and sovereign reign of Christ in the heavens. Even worse, unbelief makes us despondent. By faith we see our sin more clearly, and we see the sufficiency of Christ, which brings daily opportunities for joy in Christ. In turn, joy in Christ brings spiritual fortitude. “The joy of the Lord is the strength of his people: whereas unbelief makes our hands hang down, and our knees feeble, dispirits ourselves, and discourages others; and though it steals upon us under a semblance of humility, it is indeed the very essence of pride.”76 Pride exchanges joy in Christ for a cloud of spiritual despondency. Unbelief also brings insecurity about our salvation, and insecurity in Christ carries compounded anxieties and doubts to snuff out joy in Christ.

Inside, the air was warm, humid. A mist hung. As this husband and wife strolled the rows arm in arm, the plants seemed to take notice—their swiveling blossoms followed in our lovers’ wake, as if to drink in the full flavor of Sun Moon’s honor and modesty. The couple stopped, deep in the hothouse, to recumbently enjoy the splendor of North Korea’s leadership. An army of hummingbirds hovered above them, expert pollinators of the state, the buzzing thrum of their wing beats penetrating the souls of our lovers, all the while dazzling them with the iridescent flash of their throats and the way their long flower-kissing tongues flicked in delight. Around Sun Moon, blossoms opened, the petals spreading wide to reveal hidden pollen pots. Commander Ga dripped with sweat, and in his honor, groping stamens emanated their scent in clouds of sweet spoor that coated our lovers’ bodies with the sticky seed of socialism. Sun Moon offered her Juche to him, and he gave her all he had of Songun policy. At length, in depth, their spirited exchange culminated in a mutual exclaim of Party understanding. Suddenly, all the plants in the hothouse shuddered and dropped their blossoms, leaving a blanket upon which Sun Moon could recline as a field of butterflies ticklishly alighted upon her innocent skin. Finally, citizens, Sun Moon has shared her convictions with her husband!

Blue Planet Phenomenon. she’s from the pink planet called Constellation he’s from the dark planet beyond under a constant monitor no love a interplanetary phenomenon he’s an interstellar she’s studying astronomy what they have seen sets in motion their biology they will meet on the blue planet they should know better it’s death if they get together interplanetary love is forbidden their passion keep it hidden they should know better but they must be together to the blue planet love velocity interstellar crossing Earth’s longitudes hiding their love in the new years eve multitudes they should know better their love still not allowed under another planets blanketing cloud Planet Earth in unified love new years eve blue planet phenomenon she will fall pregnant their baby conceived at a time of human unity their unborn baby and united humanity become one in harmony interstellar before they’re discovered too late their love uncovered they should know better it’s death for forbidden love together trial on dark planet they will all die today “kill them now” judgment say they plea for their unborn baby’s mercy a reprieve child leniency only for their baby clemency “bring on the birth” authorities say a unpredicted baby delivery conceived in a time of human unity a love descendant of humanity interstellar love racing interplanetary embracing human love emanating from their newborn baby blanketing pink planet with love blanketing dark planet with love two planets authority depleting two planets a love meeting now love not forbidden love never to be hidden interstellar love plea she and he with their baby to go free By R.M. Romarney.

A long time ago, I collected the flower petals stained with my first blood; I thought there was something significant about that, there was importance in all the little moments of experience, because when you live forever, the first times matter. The first time you bleed, first time you cry — I don’t remember that — first time you see your wings, because new things defile you, purity chips away. your purity. nestled flowers in your belly, waiting to be picked. do you want innocence back? small and young smiles that make your eyes squint and cheeks flare the feeling of your face dripping down onto the grass, the painted walls you tore down, the roads you chipped away, they’ll eat away at you, the lingering feelings of a warm hand on your waist, the taps of your feet as you dance, the beats of your timbrel.’ ‘and now you are like Gods, sparkling brilliant with jewelry that worships you, and you’re splitting in order to create.’ ‘The tosses of your wet hair, the rushes of chariots speeding past, the holy, holy, holy lord god of hosts, the sweetness of a strawberry, knocks against the window by your head, the little tunes of your pipes, the cuts sliced into your fingers by uptight cacti fruits, the brisk scent of a sea crashing into the rocks, the sweat of wrestling, onions, cumin, parsley in a metal jug, mud clinging to your skin, a friendly mouth on your cheeks and forehead, chimes, chirps of chatter in the bazaar, amen, amen, amen, the plump fish rushing to take the bread you toss, scraping of a carpenter, the hiss of chalk, the wisps of clouds cradling you as you nap, the splashes of water in a hot pool, the picnic in a meadow, the pounding of feet that are chasing you, the velvet of petals rustling you awake, a giant water lily beneath you, the innocent kiss, the sprawl of the universe reflected in your eyes for the first time, the bloody wings that shred out of your back, the apples in orchards, a basket of stained flowers, excited chants of a colosseum audience, the heat of spinning and bouncing to drums and claps, the love braided into your hair, the trickles of a piano, smell of myrrh, the scratches of a spoon in a cup, the coarseness of a carpet, the stringed instruments and trumpets, the serene smile of not knowing, the sleeping angel, the delight of a creator, the amusement of gossip and rumors, the rumbling laughter between shy singing, the tangling of legs, squash, celery, carrot, and chayote, the swirled face paint, the warmth of honey in your tea, the timid face in the mirror, mahogany beams, the embrace of a bed of flowers, the taste of a grape as its fed to you, the lip smacks of an angel as you feed him a raspberry, the first dizziness of alcohol, the cool water and scent of natron and the scratch of the rock you beat your dirty clothes against, the strain of your arms, the columns of an entrance, the high ceilings of a dark cathedral, the boiling surface of bubbling stew, the burn of stained-glass, the little joyous jump you do seeing bread rise, the silky taste of olive oil, the lap of an angel humming as he embroiders a little fox into his tunic, the softness of browned feathers lulling you to sleep, the weight of a dozen blankets and pillows on your small bed, the proud smile on the other side of a window in a newly-finished building, the myrtle trees only you two know about, the palm of god as he fashions you from threads of copper, his praises, his love, his kiss to your hair, your father.

Quote from "The Dish Keepers of Honest House" ....TO TWIST THE COLD is easy when its only water you want. Tapping of the toothbrush echoes into Ella's mind like footsteps clacking a cobbled street on a bitter, dry, cold morning. Her mind pushes through sleep her body craves. It catches her head falling into a warm, soft pillow. "Go back to bed," she tells herself. "You're still asleep," Ella mumbles, pushes the blanket off, and sits up. The urgency to move persuades her to keep routines. Water from the faucet runs through paste foam like a miniature waterfall. Ella rubs sleep-deprieved eyes, then the bridge of her nose and glances into the sink. Ella's eyes astutely fixate for one, brief millisecond. Water becomes the burgundy of soldiers exiting the drain. Her mouth drops in shock. The flow turns green. It is like the bubbling fungus of flockless, fishless, stagnating ponds. Within the iridescent glimmer of her thinking -- like a brain losing blood flow, Ella's focus is the flickering flashing of gray, white dust, coal-black shadows and crows lifting from the ground. A half minute or two trails off before her mind returns to reality. Ella grasps a toothbrush between thumb and index finger. She rests the outer palm against the sink's edge, breathes in and then exhales. Tension in the brow subsides, and her chest and shoulders drop; she sighs. Ella stares at pasty foam. It exits the drain as if in a race to clear the sink of negativity -- of all germs, slimy spit, the burgundy of imagined soldiers and oppressive plaque. GRASPING THE SILKY STRAND between her fingers, Ella tucks, pulls and slides the floss gently through her teeth. Her breath is an inch or so of the mirror. Inspections leave her demeanor more alert. Clouding steam of the image tugs her conscience. She gazes into silver glass. Bits of hair loosen from the bun piled at her head's posterior. What transforms is what she imagines. The mirror becomes a window. The window possesses her Soul and Spirit. These two become concerned -- much like they did when dishonest housekeepers disrupted Ella's world in another story. Before her is a glorious bird -- shining-dark-as-coal, shimmering in hues of purple-black and black-greens. It is likened unto The Raven in Edgar Allan Poe's most famous poem of 1845. Instead of interrupting a cold December night with tapping on a chamber door, it rests its claws in the decorative, carved handle of a backrest on a stiff dining chair. It projects an air of humor and concern. It moves its head to and fro while seeking a clearer understanding. Ella studies the bird. It is surrounded in lofty bends and stretches of leafless, acorn-less, nearly lifeless, oak trees. Like fingers and arms these branches reach below. [Perhaps they are reaching for us? Rest assured; if they had designs on us, I would be someplace else, writing about something more pleasant and less frightening. Of course, you would be asleep.] Balanced in the branches is a chair. It is from Ella's childhood home. The chair sways. Ella imagines modern-day pilgrims of a distant shore. Each step is as if Mother Nature will position them upright like dolls, blown from the stability of their plastic, flat, toe-less feet. These pilgrims take fate by the hand. LIFTING A TOWEL and patting her mouth and hands, Ella pulls the towel through the rack. She walks to the bedroom, sits and picks up the newspaper. Thumbing through pages that leave fingertips black, she reads headlines: "Former Dentist Guilty of Health Care Fraud." She flips the page, pinches the tip of her nose and brushes the edge of her chin -- smearing both with ink. In the middle fold directly affront her eyes is another headline: "Dentist Punished for Misconduct." She turns the page. There is yet another: "Dentist guilty of urinating in surgery sink and using contaminated dental instruments on patients." This world contains those who are simply insane! Every profession has those who stray from goals....

When winter hits Manhattan its attack is unrelenting. What begins as a cleansing snowfall blanketing even the ugliest streets with a white serenity soon turns into a chaotic slop of wet, gray grunge and grit. The snow continues its pursuit of tranquility however, but it will never stand a chance, disintegrating into the grubby traps of tire treads and footprints. Like a new pet, winter is loved for its first few precious moments, but it is quickly tired of by anyone but the most devoted, and it becomes an unwanted beast, requiring a constant audience to manage its disorder. Yet, even as the clouds pull themselves apart like torn denim and as the glass and concrete towers take advantage of a moment’s bleak respite by scraping the open sky once again, the city still braces itself for the next imminent wave.

There were no more wireless networks to feed that information, no more information clouds to store all human knowledge. The only clouds now were the ones above, angry and red and perpetually blanketing the cold, bare Earth.

The neon lights of the ‘All Live, All Nude’ sign flickered in the rain, showering the street with sparks that sizzled and flared in the cold night, an electric cadence to match the distant rumble of thunder as dark clouds continued to roll in off the lake and blanket the Windy City in an autumnal thunderstorm.

The clouds blanketed the city, and the rain sounded like bricks hitting the roof. I hope my cat’s not still sleeping up there.


Beginning Again The glory around you is born again each day. —THE MUPPETS' VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL Creation is ongoing. The world begins anew each day. This is the miracle that makes not a sound, but which changes everything, if we can be quiet enough to feel it happen. When we can participate in this, we begin anew each day. Consider how the sun washes the Earth with its heat and then clouds dissipate, and grasses grow, and stones crumble when no one is looking to reveal a smoother, deeper face. It is the same with us. In a moment of realness, the clouds in our mind clear and our passion is restored, and our walls crumble when no one is looking. It all continues and refreshes, if we let it. It all renews so subtly. We think it is night that covers the world, but everything living is re-created in that mysterious moment of rest that blankets us all. And each time you blink, if you pause to let your heart flutter with nothing but air to flutter about, each time you open your eyes, you can begin again. It's true. This is the moment of resurrection, the opening of our eyes.

Around Sun Moon, blossoms opened, the petals spreading wide to reveal hidden pollen pots. Commander Ga dripped with sweat, and in his honor, groping stamens emanated their scent in clouds of sweet spoor that coated our lovers’ bodies with the sticky seed of socialism. Sun Moon offered her Juche to him, and he gave her all he had of Songun policy. At length, in depth, their spirited exchange culminated in a mutual exclaim of Party understanding. Suddenly, all the plants in the hothouse shuddered and dropped their blossoms, leaving a blanket upon which Sun Moon could recline as a field of butterflies ticklishly alighted upon her innocent skin.

Don’t laugh though.” “What do you mean?” said Emma. Biff didn’t say anything. He reached into his inventory and pulled out his bed and tossed it on the floor. I’m sorry, but I had to laugh. Emma laughed too. The bed had a blanket with a chicken face on it. His pillow case had the picture of a bunny rabbit on it. “Stop laughing! My mom got me the blanket and the pillowcase when I was little. Hurrr, I just never got around to replacing them.” I was still laughing and said, “No worries, Bro. Looks comfortable.” Emma, who had stopped laughing, yawned. It was contagious. Biff and I both yawned. “Okay, guys, I’m going to sleep. Good night,” said Emma. Biff and I both wished her good night and we each got into our beds and went to sleep. * * * I suppose it will come as no surprise to you that I was visited in my dreams that evening. One of the visitors I had almost expected. But the other…. The visitor I was more or less expecting to show up was, of course, the Rainbow Creeper. It appeared without any attempt to conceal itself in a mysterious form or behind a cloud of dream smoke. You know, the typical weird dream-type stuff. It spoke with the strange lilting voice that had been created when Claire had been joined to it. “Jimmy. I understand that you have rescued Emma from the witch.” “Yes, RC, I did. If Claire still has any independent memory, I hope she’s relieved.” There was a pause for a moment and then the Creeper said, “Yes, she is.” There was another brief pause and then the Rainbow Creeper changed the subject. “Have you had any luck locating Entity 303’s piece in Baby Zeke’s dimension?” I shook my head. “No, but this dimension’s Ender King, Herobrine, and Notch are working on ways to find it. We are going to establish a search party tomorrow using volunteers. It may take a while, but we will leave no stone unturned.” “Excellent,” said the Rainbow Creeper. “I’m sure Entity 303 will not be able to escape your reconnaissance.” “How are things going in my native dimension?” “They are still searching as well. No news.” The Rainbow Creeper was beginning to fade from my dream when I remembered. “Creeper? Wait a minute. Something else happened.” The Creeper’s form solidified again and it looked at me, its expressionless

San Gabriel emerges from the fog laden with dew. The clouds of the night slept over the village searching for the warmth of the people. Now the sun is about to come out and the fog rises slowly, rolling up its sheet, leaving white strips over the rooftops. A gray steam, hardly visible, rises from the trees and the wet earth, attracted by the clouds, but it vanishes immediately. Then the black smoke comes from the kitchens, smelling of burned oak, covering the sky with ashes. In the distance the mountains are still in shadow. [ At daybreak ] Wherever you look in Luvina, it’s a very sad place. You’re going there, so you’ll find out. I would say it’s the place where sadness nests. Where smiles are unknown as if people’s faces had been frozen. And if you like, you can see that sadness just any time. The breeze that blows there moves it around but never takes it away. It seems like it was born there. And you can almost taste and feel it, because it’s always over you, against you and because it’s heavy like a large plaster weighing on the living flesh of the heart. The people from there say that when the moon is full they clearly see the figure of the wind sweeping along Luvina’s streets, bearing behind it a black blanket; but what I always managed to see when there was a moon in Luvina was the image of despair - always. [ Luvina ]

Nature Thou Art Beautiful Tiny waterfalls tumbling down elegant slopes of smoothly eroded treacherous rocks..... Trees magnificently and beautifully displayed. Their branches sheltering little springs that sprout from beneath. Soft clouds beckon from above. Like wool blankets, hovering over trees, mountains, hills, cliffs, caves and plains. Moistening hilltops, freshly fallen leaves, trees, grass, valleys and meadows with their heavenly dew. Wind hearkens it's ears, to the voice of the One who speaks the language of the winds. The winds obey and swaying breeze gently rock nature sweetly, to slumber..... The stars shine, the moon is bright and it's a starry night. O slumber thou art indeed sweet. O nature's lullabies have rocked me to sleep... Zzzz... and the night is spent.... "Hello!" greets the Sun. "I'm here to start all over again!

He came to the boundary gate, and wheeled, and dismounted. From the high land Sandalwood stretched out like a relief map: pale brown under dead barley grass, silver under dead rye grass, yellow under stubble; the folds of the bare hills marked dark green with wattle and gum. Sandalwood and young gums looked almost grey in the brown-purple hills, and the farthest hills, and the cloud shadows, and the far clumps of scrub were dark blue, and the east wind was dry as fire, and the whole huge land smelled of eucalyptus and dry grass and a harsh sweet smell like the stems of everlastings. The huge, huge land rolled out like a blanket under the world-enlarging cry of the crows, which made the screech of a snowstorm of white cockatoos in the river gums by the creek sound busy and trivial and frail.

The winds blew with vicious force over the barren rocks, whipping through canyons and craggy drops, across slopes and ridges, cutting into the scant vegetation and bending it close to the point of breaking, yet slipping through the mixture of clouds and mist with elusive quickness, leaving it unexplainably and strangely motionless. The sound of the wind was like the deep roar of the ocean breaking on an open beach, heavy and rolling, blanketing the empty peaks in a peculiar drone that, when one had been enveloped for a while, created its own level of silence.

The bedsheets chilled their bodies with sweat-soak, rumpled beneath them. They lay side by side, David and Jonthan, and, behind their blindfolds, they traced the arc their drones made over earth. Lux levels rose in golden bars just outside their vision as the drones dipped through clouds cover and flew past domed cityscapes. Chicago glowed through a blanket of clouds. The drones swooped upward and dwarf galaxies turned from cosmic smudges into multihued ninja shurikens.

Dark fog and flames blanketed the cove while the storm clouds thundered. Joy’s heart broke at the creatures’ desperate cries. They wouldn’t survive God’s wrath.

I inhale deeply, watching the frosty cloud of my breath dissipate in the air when I exhale. I need a moment to myself, to enjoy this silence and take in everything that happened tonight. Commit it all to memory. I want to wrap this euphoric feeling around me like a cozy blanket.

Sitting in the courtyard, I watch the woman sweeping. I luxuriate in the sound of the bristles of her besom against the ground. She sweeps in an invisible pattern only she understands. I study her hands. They are blackened with chimney dust— not unlike the soft dust she’s now sweeping. It rises in a cloud above her, which makes me wonder: Where does it come from? The dust on our overworked hands and travelled shoes. The dust we inhale and cough into our handkerchiefs. The house dust, the road dust, the concrete dust, and cosmic dust. Where are they born? Perhaps they come from our aged bodies. We shed our skins like we shed our beauty— not all at once. And we walk freely on this blanket of dust without paying any mind to our ancestors, though we walk on them! Tread softly, for you tread on Yeats’s wrists and Poe’s elbows. You tread on van Gogh’s ears and Keller’s eyes. You breathe in your grandfather’s lover and the little girl you were when you were four. You smell them after the first rain in a long dry spell, or when an old lamp smoulders the bulb quite well. These all serve as reminders of our dusty secret: we are all dust under dust under dust. So next time it settles, remember to ask the dust!

overloaded horses bent backwards by the chisel of the mason who once sculpted an eternal now on the brow of the wingless archangel, time-deformed cherubim and the false protests, overweight bowels fallen from the barracks of the pink house carved with grey rain unfallen, never creaking, never opening door, with the mouth wide, darkened and extinguished like a burning boat floating in a voiceless sea, bottle of rum down threadbare socks, singing from pavement to pavement, bright iridescent flame, "Oh, my Annie, my heart is sore!", slept chin on the curb of the last star, the lintel illuminated the forgotten light cast to a different plane, ah the wick of a celestial candle. The piling up of pigeons, tram lines, the pickpocket boys, the melancholy silver, an ode to Plotinus, the rattle of cattle, the goat in the woods, and the retreat night in the railroad houses, the ghosts of terraces, the wine shakes, the broken pencils, the drunk and wet rags, the eucalyptus and the sky. Impossible eyes, wide avenues, shirt sleeves, time receded, 'now close your eyes, this will not hurt a bit', the rose within the rose, dreaming pale under sheets such brilliance, highlighting unreality of a night that never comes. Toothless Cantineros stomp sad lullabies with sad old boots, turning from star to star, following the trail of the line, from dust, to dust, back to dust, out late, wrapped in a white blanket, top of the world, laughs upturned, belly rumbling by the butchers door, kissing the idol, tracing the balconies, long strings of flowers in the shape of a heart, love rolls and folds, from the Window to Window, afflicting seriousness from one too big and ever-charged soul, consolidating everything to nothing, of a song unsung, the sun soundlessly rising, reducing the majesty of heroic hearts and observing the sad night with watery eyes, everything present, abounding, horses frolic on the high hazy hills, a ships sails into the mist, a baby weeps for mother, windows open, lights behind curtains, the supple avenue swoons in the blissful banality, bells ringing for all yet to come forgotten, of bursting beauty bathing in every bright eternal now, counteract the charge, a last turn, what will it be, flowers by the gate, shoe less in the park, burn a hole in the missionary door, by the moonlit table, reading the decree of the Rose to the Resistance, holding the parchment, once a green tree, sticking out of the recital and the solitaire, unbuttoning her coat sitting for a portrait, uncorking a bottle, her eyes like lead, her loose blouse and petticoat, drying out briefs by the stone belfry and her hair in a photo long ago when, black as a night, a muddy river past the weeds, carrying the leaves, her coffee stained photo blowing down the street. Train by train, all goes slow, mist its the morning of lights, it is the day of the Bull, the fiesta of magic, the castanets never stop, the sound between the ringing of the bells, the long and muted silence of the distant sea, gypsy hands full of rosemary, every sweet, deep blue buckets for eyes, dawn comes, the Brahmanic splendour, sunlit gilt crown capped by clouds, brazen, illuminated, bright be dawn, golden avenues, its top to bottom, green to gold, but the sky and the plaza, blood red like the great bleeding out Bull, and if your quiet enough, you can hear the heart weeping.

There is no story. There is just the truth. Look around you. Everything you see, and far beyond, all of it was once green. Where you see buildings, thousand-year-old trees once stood. Above, where those aircar cables hang? That was once the crisscross of leafy vines. That cracked asphalt that scalds your paws? It was once rich earth, protected by a blanket of grass. And our kind did not look into glass windows to find our skinny reflections; we saw our faces mirrored in fresh streams—not one of them toxic. It was a paradise. Then the men came. They pulled up every plant. They drove off every animal. They paved over each patch of dirt. They built towers higher than the tallest tree trunks. They pumped smoke from factory chimneys, driving away the clouds. They replaced all that was green with shades of gray—steel and iron and concrete. But with time, mutations occur. Nature begins to adapt. If you don’t adapt, you don’t stand a chance in this world. And if you don’t have friends by your side, alerting you to danger and sharing their good food, it’s a very lonely world, indeed. So stick together, little ones. Stay close to your littermates, and help each other adapt. Make the world greener through your dreams. Build your own paradise.

brief glimpses of sun between otherwise omnipresent dull gray cloud cover, a shapeless mist blanketing the sky. Weather’s

brief glimpses of sun between otherwise omnipresent dull gray cloud cover, a shapeless mist blanketing the sky. Weather’s equivalent of depression, I mused, replicating the mind’s perception in the atmosphere.

I want to go on a picnic with you and watch the clouds I want to save random wildlife that does not need to be saved with you I want to go out dancing with you I want late-night talks until dawn Frosty mornings with coffee and a blanket Let's make music together Write No art is bad No thought is too far fetched No joke too lame Come sit with me for a while Let's be still

Thank You LORD For oceans Wide and deep That You keep In ocean beds Ocean beds... that are Porous as the clouds That hold the mist and the rain Cushion the falling hail And blanket white flakes of snow

I want you too.” Her words are no more than a whisper “I want you. And Jadi,” she admits, and there’s a raw vulnerability in those simple words that I don’t understand. “I shouldn’t, should I? Want you both, I mean? Like that?” I roll to my side to stare at her in disbelief. With how close I am to her, the move has my face coming dangerously close to her own. “You want me?” “Why?” I ask. But I already know the answer. Because no one knows where Astarte’s arrow will strike, but when she aims, she strikes true. Because the gods are cruel and love to toy with their half-mortal children even more than they love to play with the mortals. Because Adrienne’s fate is somehow woven with mine and Jadi’s. Jadi told me that, he told me, and –fool that I am – I ignored him. “I’m sorry,” I say, trying to soften my voice. To curb the mocking, defensive bite in my words. “I just don’t see how you could. Not after how I’ve treated you.” Adrienne gives me a lopsided grin, then reaches over to lightly pat my shoulder. “You not that bad.” Her smile falls, expression growing serious. “I don’t know how explain it. I just feel… it feels…” she trails off, brow furrowing in frustration. She tucks her hands under her chin, and without thinking about it, I grasp them in my own. “I know.” The words come out in a low rumble. “I know. You don’t have to explain.” Because I feel it too. The pull towards her. It’s more than a physical attraction. More than desire – though that is certainly part of it. And now that I’m looking at her, with her mouth close to my own and her hands in mine and the heat of her body mixing with my own beneath the blankets. It feels right, and there’s no room for hesitation. Only action. I lean forward, slowly enough that she has time to object, my eyes never leaving her own. My nose brushes against hers for a brief moment, and then she’s pushing forward, her lips pressing against mine with a raw urgency that has fire racing through my veins and lust clouding my vision. It’s too much. Too much. I pull back, angling my body over hers, keeping my weight on my elbows as I cup her face in one hand, my thumb stroking the underside of her jaw, fingers tangling in her loose hair. I stare down at her – at her dilated pupils and sleep-mussed hair. At her parted lips and the delicate line of her throat. I can see her pulse thundering beneath the skin, and the rosy flush spreading down her neck. She’s so delicate. I’m torn between wanting to worship her and devour her. Carefully, I brush my mouth against hers, then trace the shape of her lips with my teeth and tongue. My hands tremble where they grip her face, keeping her from chasing my teasing kisses. It’s almost embarrassing, the way I’m quaking like an autumn leaf above her. She lets out a frustrated whimper, and I deepen the kiss, swallowing up the sound as I tangle my tongue with her own. When her own kisses become more insistent, I pull back, waiting for her to retreat before delving forward again. “Good,” I murmur, my thumb stroking her pulse point when she relaxes beneath me. “There’s no rush.” I’m speaking more to myself than to her. Because more than anything, I want to feel myself buried deep inside her. I want to push the fabric between us aside and feel her wet and clenching around me. I want to bury my head between her thighs and taste her, to turn those faint whimpers into wild, throaty cries. But now isn’t the time for that. I kiss her again, slowly this time. Deep. Controlled. I need to be controlled. Take this slow. Her thighs part, long limbs twining with mine, the heels of her feet pressing against the backs of my legs. Pulling me towards her, until my cock is pressed against her core and I can practically feel the heat of her, even with our clothes between us. She rocks against me, her faint mewling cry swallowed up by my mouth, and it’s like something in me snaps. Something primal and hungry and dark. Something that’s only come out with Jadi.

The present Popina loved most of all, was the blanket she got from her Uncle Paul. It was green as the grass and soft as a sigh, as fluffy as a cloud that floats in the sky. Carrying it around was such a pleasure, the little blanket was Popina's treasure.

I was in the robe-chamber, adjoining the House of Lords, when the King put on his robes. His brow was much furrowed with age and quite clouded with care. And is this all the world can give even to a king? All the grandeur it can afford? A blanket of ermine round his shoulders, so heavy and cumbersome he can scarcely move under it! A huge heap of borrowed hair, with a few plates of gold and glittering stones upon his head! Alas, what a bauble is human greatness! And even this will not endure.

of the tiny aircraft and helped the third passenger aboard, his girlfriend Sandra, 30. The plane taxied and sped down the runway. As it rose into the blue California sun, Norman felt a surge of excitement. But as they banked east over Venice Beach, it was clear there was a storm ahead. In front of them a thick blanket of grey cloud was smothering the San Bernardino Mountains. Only the very tips of their 3,000 m (10,000 ft) peaks showed above the gloom. Norman Senior asked the pilot if it was okay to fly in that weather. The pilot reassured them: it was just a thirty-minute hop. They’d stay low and pop through the mountains to Big Bear before they knew it. Norman wondered if he’d be able to see the slope he’d won the championship on when they wheeled round Mount Baldy. His dad nodded and sat back to read the paper and whistle a Willie Nelson tune. Up front, Norman was savouring every moment. He stretched up to see over the plane’s dashboard and listened to the air traffic chatter on his headphones. As the foothills rose below them, he heard Burbank control pass their plane on to Pomona Control. The pilot told Pomona he wanted to stay below 2,300 m (7,500 ft) because of low freezing levels. Then a private plane radioed a warning against flying into the Big Bear area without decent instruments. Suddenly, the sun went out. The greyness was all around them, as thick as soup. They had pierced the storm. The plane shook and lurched. A tree seemed to flit by in the mist, its spiky fingers lunging at the window. But that couldn’t be, not up here. Then there really was a branch outside and with a sickening yawn, time slowed down and the horror unfurled. Norman instinctively curled into a ball. A wing clipped into a tree, tumbling the plane round, up, down, over and round. The spinning only stopped when they slammed into the rugged north face of Ontario Peak. The plane was instantly smashed into debris and the passengers hurled across an icy gully. And there they lay, sprawled amid the wreckage, 75 m (250 ft) from the top of the 2,650 m (8,693 ft) high mountain and perched on a 45-degree ice slope in the heartless storm.

She lay—at six years old? Seven?—on a blanket in the back garden, watching clouds drift across the sky. Then, all at once, the clouds were no longer there, and neither was Caro. She was nowhere and everywhere, woven into what she later thought of as “the fabric of the universe.” She was the clouds, the grass, the breeze, the ant crawling across her arm. Everything was her, and she was everything.