Burst Fade Quotes

But this is touching, Severus,” said Dumbledore seriously. “Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?” “For him?” shouted Snape. “Expecto Patronum!” From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe. She landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office, and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears. “After all this time?” “Always,” said Snape.

She had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!

When love is roaming in our mind, looping in the deepest fringes of our heart, undreamt spaciousness emerges, repealing the constraints of triviality and letting stifling narrowness fade away. While our mindset is besieged by a revolving burst of emotion, our world is ultimately opening up. (Cape of good hope)

People weren't firecrackers who burst into the night sky with brilliance and glory, and a moment later faded away to nothing. Our souls had to be more lasting than that.

I felt the familiar warm tingling at the center of my chest and had just enough time to gasp as some invisible hand yanked me forward, smacking my forehead against the dashboard with enough force to stun me dumb. Chubs slammed on the brakes, forcing my seat belt to do its job and lock against my chest. I was thrown back into my seat, an explosion of colors bursting in my vision. "Oh, hell no!" Chubs roared, slamming a hand against the steering wheel. "That's it! We don not use our abilities on one another, goddammit! Behave yourself!

Everyone always wants to know how you can tell when it's true love, and the answer is this: when the pain doesn't fade and the scars don't heal, and it's too damned late. The tears threaten to return, so I willfully banish all thoughts from my head and take a few more deep breaths. I'm suddenly dizzy from the panic attack I've just suffered, and I close my eyes, resting my head against the warm leather of my steering wheel. Loneliness doesn't exist on any single plane of consciousness. It's generally a low throb, barely audible, like the hum of a Mercedes engine in park, but every so often the demands of the highway call for a burst of acceleration, and the hum becomes a thunderous, elemental roar, and once again you're reminded of what this baby's carrying under the hood.

My world had been fading to gray until she burst in like a bombshell of color and light...

The soul gropes in search of a soul, and finds it. And that soul, found and proven, is a woman. A hand sustains you, it is hers; lips lightly touch your forehead, they are her lips; you hear breathing near you, it is she. To have her wholly, from her devotion to her pity, never to be left alone, to have that sweet shyness as, to lean on that unbending reed, to touch, Providence with your hands and be able to grasp it in your arms; God made palpable, what transport! The heart, that dark celestial flower, bursts into a mysterious bloom. You would not give up that shade for all the light in the world! The angel soul is there, forever there; if she goes away, it is only to return; she fades away in a dream and reappears in reality. You feel an approaching warmth, she is there. You overflow with serenity, gaiety, and ecstasy; you are radiant in your darkness. And the thousand little cares! The trifles that are enormous in this void. The most ineffable accents of the womanly voice used to comfort you, and replacing for you the vanished universe! You are caressed through the soul. You see nothing but you feel yourself adored. It is paradise of darkness.

Every death is a burst of fuel I use to stoke the fires that sit inside me. But it’s more than anger. It’s love too. It’s the fact that I care about the people who will die if I don’t do this.", FADE by Kailin Gow

Look,” I began, “I get it. You don’t like me, but—” “I don’t like you?” He let out a low, flat laugh. One fell into the next, and it was awful—not at all him. He was half choking on them as he turned around, shaking his head. It almost sounded like a sob, the way his breath burst out of him. “I don’t like you,” he repeated, his face bleak. “I don’t like you?” “Liam—” I started, alarmed. “I can’t—I can’t think about anything or anyone else,” he whispered. A hand drifted up, dragging back through his hair. “I can’t think straight when you’re around. I can’t sleep. It feels like I can’t breathe—I just—” “Liam, please,” I begged. “You’re tired. You’re barely over being sick. Let’s just… Can we just go back to the others?” “I love you.” He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. “I love you every second of every day, and I don’t understand why, or how to make it stop—” He looked wild with pain; it pinned me in place, even before what he had said registered in my mind. “I know it’s wrong; I know it down to my damn bones. And I feel like I’m sick. I’m trying to be a good person, but I can’t. I can’t do it anymore.

I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter – " "But this is touching, Severus," said Dumbledore seriously. "Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?" "For him?" shouted Snape. "Expecto Patronum!" From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe. She landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office, and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears. "After all this time?" "Always" said Snape.

So the boy…the boy must die?” asked Snape quite calmly. “And Voldemort himself must do it, Severus. That is essential.” Another long silence. Then Snape said, “I thought…all these years…that we were protecting him for her. For Lily.” “We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength,” said Dumbledore, his eyes still tight shut. “Meanwhile, the connection between them grows ever stronger, a parasitic growth: Sometimes I have thought he suspects it himself. If I know him, he will have arranged matters so that when he does set out to meet his death, it will truly mean the end of Voldemort.” Dumbledore opened his eyes. Snape looked horrified. “You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?” “Don’t be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?” “Lately, only those whom I could not save,” said Snape. He stood up. “You have used me.” “Meaning?” “I have spied for you and lied for you, put myself in mortal danger for you. Everything was supposed to be to keep Lily Potter’s son safe. Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter--” “But this is touching, Severus,” said Dumbledore seriously. “Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?” “For him?” shouted Snape. “Expecto Patronum!” From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe: She landed on the office floor, bounded once across the office, and soared out of the window. Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silvery glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears. “After all this time?” “Always,” said Snape.

I have walked by stalls in the market-place where books, dog-eared and faded from their purple, have burst with a white hosanna. I have seen people crowned with a double crown, holding in either hand the crook and flail, the power and the glory. I have understood how the scar be­comes a star, I have felt the flake of fire fall, miraculous and pentecostal. My yesterdays walk with me. They keep step, they are grey faces that peer over my shoulder.

You'll have to learn to control your emotions. They're new, like achild's now, bursting with passion. Never let them fade, or part of you will die. But they cal also destroy you. Hold them dear, but don't let them take hold of you.

Shy burst out laughing. When he quit, he saw she was smiling up at him. and it hit him. All of it. Waking up to her. Going to bed with her. Making love to her. Eating with her. Laughing with her. Kissing her. Going shopping with her, and when she was in a store and wandering away, he saw her looking over the racks, looking for him, and when he came to her at her back, she'd turned to him, looking lost, and leaned into him the second he got there, suddenly found. Jesus, he had it. All of it. "I never dreamed any fuckin' dream," he whispered, and the smile faded from her face as tears filled her eyes. She understood him. "Shy-" "Didn't dream it, saw it, waited my time, and then you gave it to me." "Shy," her voice broke on his name. He looked into her blue eyes swimming with tears, feeling her fingers digging into his shoulders, her weight in his lap, the smell of her hair, the taste of her still on his tongue. Yes, he fucking had it. When he was twelve he lost it. Now he had it again. All of it. Everything.

She saw the light again. With some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one's relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!

So much happiness is caged in language, ready to burst out anytime and fade

MOTHER – By Ted Kooser Mid April already, and the wild plums bloom at the roadside, a lacy white against the exuberant, jubilant green of new grass and the dusty, fading black of burned-out ditches. No leaves, not yet, only the delicate, star-petaled blossoms, sweet with their timeless perfume. You have been gone a month today and have missed three rains and one nightlong watch for tornadoes. I sat in the cellar from six to eight while fat spring clouds went somersaulting, rumbling east. Then it poured, a storm that walked on legs of lightning, dragging its shaggy belly over the fields. The meadowlarks are back, and the finches are turning from green to gold. Those same two geese have come to the pond again this year, honking in over the trees and splashing down. They never nest, but stay a week or two then leave. The peonies are up, the red sprouts, burning in circles like birthday candles, for this is the month of my birth, as you know, the best month to be born in, thanks to you, everything ready to burst with living. There will be no more new flannel nightshirts sewn on your old black Singer, no birthday card addressed in a shaky but businesslike hand. You asked me if I would be sad when it happened and I am sad. But the iris I moved from your house now hold in the dusty dry fists of their roots green knives and forks as if waiting for dinner, as if spring were a feast. I thank you for that. Were it not for the way you taught me to look at the world, to see the life at play in everything, I would have to be lonely forever.

Every year, Kansas watches the world die. Civilizations of wheat grow tall and green; they grow old and golden, and then men shaped from the same earth as the crop cut those lives down. And when the grain is threshed, and the dances and festivals have come and gone, then the fields are given over to fire, and the wheat stubble ascends into the Kansas sky, and the moon swells to bursting above a blackened earth. The fields around Henry, Kansas, had given up their gold and were charred. Some had already been tilled under, waiting for the promised life of new seed. Waiting for winter, and for spring, and another black death. The harvest had been good. Men, women, boys and girls had found work, and Henry Days had been all hot dogs and laughter, even without Frank Willis's old brown truck in the parade. The truck was over on the edge of town, by a lonely barn decorated with new No Trespassing signs and a hole in the ground where the Willis house had been in the spring and the early summer. Late summer had now faded into fall, and the pale blue farm house was gone. Kansas would never forget it.

My arms broke free from my control. My left hand reached for his face, his hair, to wind my fingers in it. My right hand was faster, was not mine. Melanie's fist punched his jaw, knocked his face away from mine with a blunt, low sound. Flesh against flesh, hard and angry. The force of it was not enough to move him far, but he scrambled away from me the instant our lips were no longer connected, gaping with horrorstruck eyes at my horrorstruck expression. I stared down at the still-clenched fist, as repulsed as if I'd found a scorpion growing on the end of my arm. A gasp of revulsion choked its way out of my throat. I grabbed the right wrist with my left hand, desperate to keep Melanie from using my body for violence again. I glanced up at Jared. He was staring at the fist I restrained, too, the horror fading, surprise taking its place. In that second, his expression was entirely defenseless. I could easily read his thoughts as they moved across his unlocked face. This was not what he had expected. And he's had expectations; that was plain to see. This had been a test. A test he'd thought he was prepared to evaluate. But he'd been surprised. Did that mean pass or fail? The pain in my chest was not a surprise. I already knew that a breaking heart was more than an exaggeration. In a flight-or-fight situation, I never had a choice; it would always be flight for me. Because Jared was between me and the darkness of the tunnel exit, I wheeled and threw myself into the box-packed hole. I was sobbing because it had been a test, and, stupid, stupid, stupid, emotional creature that I was, I wanted it to be real. Melanie was writhing in agony inside me, and it was hard to make sense of the double pain. I felt as thought I was dying because it wasn't real; she felt as though she was dying because, to her, it had felt real enough. In all that she'd lost since the end of the world, so long ago, she'd never before felt betrayed. 'No one's betrayed you, stupid,' I railed at her. 'How could he? How?' she ranted, ignoring me. We sobbed beyond control. One word snapped us back from the edge of hysteria. From the mouth of the hole, Jared's low, rough voice - broken and strangely childlike - asked, "Mel?" "Mel?" he asked again, the hope he didn't want to feel colouring his tone. My breath caught in another sob, an aftershock. "You know that was for you, Mel. You know that. Not for h- it. You know I wasn't kissing it." "If you're in there, Mel..." He paused. Melanie hated the "if". A sob burst up through my lungs and I gasped for air. "I love you," Jared said. "Even if you're not there, if you can't hear me, I love you.

Pigeon?” “Yeah?” A few moments passed, and then he sighed. “Nothing.” Travis hesitated. “I can’t shake this feeling,” he said under his breath. “What do you mean? Like a bad feeling?” I said, suddenly nervous. He turned to me with concern in his eyes, “I have this crazy feeling that once we get home, I’m going to wake up. Like none of this was real.” I slid my arms around his waist, running my hands up the lean muscles of his back. “Is that what you’re worried about?” He looked down to his wrist, and then glanced to the thick silver band on his left finger. “I just can’t shake the feeling that the bubble’s going to burst, and I’m going to be lying in my bed alone, wishing you were there with me.” “I don’t know what I’m going to do with you, Trav! I’ve dumped someone for you—twice—I’ve picked up and went to Vegas with you—twice—I’ve literally gone through hell and back, married you and branded myself with your name. I’m running out of ideas to prove to you that I’m yours.” A small smile graced his lips. “I love it when you say that.” “That I’m yours?” I asked. I leaned up on the balls of my feet, pressing my lips against his. “I. Am. Yours. Mrs. Travis Maddox, forever and always.” His small smile faded as he looked at the boarding gate and then down to me. “I’m gonna fuck it up, Pigeon. You’re gonna get sick of my shit.” I laughed. “I’m sick of your shit, now. I still married you.” “I thought once we got married, that I’d feel a little more reassured about losing you. But I feel like if I get on that plane….” “Travis? I love you. Let’s go home.” His eyebrows pulled in. “You won’t leave me, right? Even when I’m a pain in the ass?” “I vowed in front of God…and Elvis…that I wouldn’t, didn’t I?” His frown lightened a bit. “This is forever?” One corner of my mouth turned up. “Would it make you feel better if we made a wager?” “What kind of husband would I be if I bet against my own marriage?” I smiled. “The stupid kind. Didn’t you listen to your dad when he told you not to bet against me?” He raised an eyebrow. “So you’re that sure, huh? You’d bet on it?” I wrapped my arms around his neck and smiled against his lips. “I’d bet my first born. That’s how sure I am.” And then the peace returned. “You can’t be that sure,” he said, the anxiousness absent from his voice. I raised an eyebrow, and my mouth pulled to one side. “Wanna bet?

I went home and tried to sleep, but couldn't, so I stared up at the moon, watching how it's trailing edge faded into darkness, so close to being full, but not quite there. A pregnant moon, Grandma called it. Full almost to bursting, and ready to give birth to something unthinkable.

Some curses fade and leave nothing but the faintest mark, a tea stain on watered silk. There are those that are so malevolent that, upon defeat, explode in a fiery burst of sulfurous flames, burning everything they touch as they die. Others dissolve like morning mist in the brightness of the midday sun. Some cannot be defeated at all, but feed upon the energy spent trying to vanquish it, growing more and more potent with each failed attempt. And then there are those ancient curses with deceptively simple antidotes that shatter like jagged shards of a vast mirror. These curses may be broken, but never completely destroyed, sharp slivers of light distorted.

...watching it with fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with delight, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!

Then everything turned brilliant white for a second, and Jacob's eyes were stunned. The shock faded, but then another flash came, dulled by the darkness of the fog. Blades of lightning broke through the sea of smoke, accompanied by the violent clap of thunder, as if an angry god saw the storm devour them, and burst out into wild applause.

Directly overhead the Milky Way was as distinct as a highway across the sky. The constellations shown brilliantly, except the north, where they were blurred by the white sheets of the Aurora. Now shimmering like translucent curtains drawn over the windows of heaven, the northern lights suddenly streaked across a million miles of space to burst in silent explosions. Fountains of light, pale greens, reds, and yellows, showered the stars and geysered up to the center of the sky, where they pooled to form a multicolored sphere, a kind of mock sun that gave light but no heat, pulsing, flaring, and casting beams in all directions, horizon to horizon. Below, the wolves howled with midnight madness and the two young men stood in speechless awe. Even after the spectacle ended, the Aurora fading again to faint shimmer, they stood as silent and transfixed as the first human beings ever to behold the wonder of creation. Starkmann felt the diminishment that is not self-depreciation but humility; for what was he and what was Bonnie George? Flickers of consciousness imprisoned in lumps of dust; above them a sky ablaze with the Aurora, around them a wilderness where wolves sang savage arias to a frozen moon.

The sun, nurturing mother of the earth, poured a scalding milk upon the day, boiling some of the blue from the sky and leaving the heavens faded. Even the oak shadows now throbbed with heat, and as I walked away from my mother, I was so hot with shame that I would not have been surprised if the grass had burst into fire under my feet.

It also meant it was quiet enough to hear Jude’s panting as he came bursting through the atrium’s doors.

FLOWERS FADE, FREEZE in an early frost, wither on the vine. Trees burst into flame and burn themselves out. Leaves crumble to ash.

They shine brighter than anything else in the sky and then fade out really quickly. A supernova is a short burst of extraordinary energy.

Big opportunities lie in the creation of something new. But that innovation has to be relevant and inspiring, or it will burst into color and fade away as quickly as fireworks.

The sun is setting, Ona reminds us, and our light is fading. We should light the kerosene lamp. But what of your question? asks Greta. Should we consider asking the men to leave? None of us have ever asked the men for anything, Agatha states. Not a single thing, not even for the salt to be passed, not even for a penny or a moment alone or to take the washing in or to open a curtain or to go easy on the small yearlings or to put your hand on the small of my back as I try, again, for the twelfth or thirteenth time, to push a baby out of my body. Isn't it interesting, she says, that the one and only request the women would make of the men would be to leave? The women break out laughing again. They simply can't stop laughing, and if one of them stops for a moment she will quickly resume laughing with a loud burst, and off they'll all go again. It's not an option, says Agata, at last. No, the others (finally in complete accord!) agree. Asking the men to leave is not an option. Greta asks the women to imagine her team, Ruth and Cheryl (Agata yelps in exasperation at the mention of their names), requesting that Greta leave them alone for the day to graze in the field and do nothing. Imagine my hens, adds Agata, telling me to turn around and leave the premises when I show up to gather the eggs. Ona begs the women to stop making her laugh, she's afraid she'll go into premature labour. This makes them laugh harder! They even find it uproariously funny that I continue to write during all of this. Ona's laughter is the finest, the most exquisite sound in all of nature, filled with breath and promise, and the only sound she releases into the world that she doesn't also try to retrieve.

Love is not a spaceship you construct and then fly off together into the stars. Love is a soap bubble that bursts in the air. Love is the first winter snowflake that falls into you palm, a mirage that glows in the sun and fades in the shadows.

You were born on a moving train. And even though it feels like you're standing still, time is sweeping past you, right where you sit. But once in a while you look up, and actually feel the inertia, and watch as the present turns into a memory —as if some future you is already looking back on it. Dès Vu. One day you’ll remember this moment, and it’ll mean something very different. Maybe you’ll cringe and laugh, or brim with pride, aching to return. or notice some detail hidden in the scene, a future landmark making its first appearance or discreetly taking its final bow. So you try to sense it ahead of time, looking for clues, as if you’re walking through the memory while it’s still happening, feeling for all the world like a time traveler. The world around you is secretly strange: some details are charming and dated, others precious and irretrievable, but all fade into the quaint texture of the day. You try to read the faces around you, each fretting about the day’s concerns, not yet realizing that this world is already out of their hands. That it doesn’t have to be this way, it just sort of happened, and everything will soon be completely different. Because you really are a time traveler, leaping into the future in little tentative steps. Just a kid stuck in a strange land without a map, With nothing to do but soak in the moment and take one last look before moving on. But another part of you is already an old man, looking back on things. Waiting at the door for his granddaughter, who’s trying to make her way home for a visit. You are two people still separated by an ocean of time, Part of you bursting to talk about what you saw, Part of you longing to tell you what it means.

With me she was larger-than-life and bursting with goodness. I never understood this other side of her. She would shrug and say she felt shy with men she liked, but that wasn’t it. It wasn’t shyness. It was fading. She dimmed her light to make a certain kind of man feel vibrant.

I happened to catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window glass. The image of myself that floated to the surface, tinged with blue against a backdrop of the signs, walls, and windows of the nearby buildings, looked absolutely miserable. Not sad, or tired, but the dictionary definition of a miserable person. This was the woman that I saw in the glass, while an assortment of other objects drifted in and out of the reflection. The space around my head was wild with baby hair or stray hairs that had come free. My shoulders sagged, and the skin around my eyes was sunken. My arms and legs looked stubby while my neck looked long and skinny. The tendons around my collarbone and throat stuck out, and my skin was anything but supple, as if the flesh had been deflated, leaving bizarre diagonal lines on my cheeks. What I saw in the reflection was myself, in a cardigan and faded jeans, at age thirty-four. Just a miserable woman, who couldn’t even enjoy herself on a gorgeous day like this, on her own in the city, desperately hugging a bag full to bursting with the kind of things that other people wave off or throw in the trash the first chance they get.

Why did the burst of activity fade so rapidly? The specific explanations diverge in their particulars, but they agree on the central point that, as H. Floris Cohen, put it, “the root cause of its decline is to be found in the Faith, and in the ability of its orthodox upholders to stifle once-flowering science.”16 To Islamic scholar G. E. von Grunebaum, Islam was never able to accept that scientific research is a means of glorifying God.

Don’t let yourself be fooled with illusions. Hitler has made it very clear that he will annihilate all the Jews before the clock strikes twelve, before they can hear the last stroke.” I burst out: “What does it matter to you? Do we have to regard Hitler as a prophet?” His glazed, faded eyes looked at me. At last he said in a weary voice: “I’ve got more faith in Hitler than in anyone else. He’s the only one who’s kept his promises, all his promises, to the Jewish people.

subculture, it was phenomenally refreshing to see the ego depicted with wry wit. “We are constantly murmuring, muttering, scheming, or wondering to ourselves under our breath,” wrote Epstein. “ ‘I like this. I don’t like that. She hurt me. How can I get that? More of this, no more of that.’ Much of our inner dialogue is this constant reaction to experience by a selfish, childish protagonist. None of us has moved very far from the seven-year-old who vigilantly watches to see who got more.” There were also delightful passages about the human tendency to lurch headlong from one pleasurable experience to the next without ever achieving satisfaction. Epstein totally nailed my habit of hunting around my plate for the next bite before I’d tasted what was in my mouth. As he described it, “I do not want to experience the fading of the flavor—the colorless, cottony pulp that succeeds that spectacular burst over my taste buds.” Prior to reading Epstein,

You weren’t supposed to choose me,” he said. Behind them, Ira approached, stunned and speechless for what must have been the first time in his life. He helped lift Samuel, whose cheeks had blanched as well. Camille prodded Oscar’s arms and stomach and face. It was truly him. The unbearable grief over losing him flipped inside out. Her joy ran so deep and strong she thought she might burst from it. “The night the Christina went down, you rowed to me,” she answered, her throat knotted as she thought of her father. She forced it down. “This time, I must have needed to row to you.” Oscar kissed her, his lips still cold but filled with life. She leaned into him and hung on as though he might disappear. Ira let out a playful high-pitched whistle. Samuel coughed. Oscar and Camille reluctantly pulled apart and blushed. “Holy gallnipper,” Ira said. Camille grinned, not minding in the least that he was using that annoying turn of phrase again. “I can’t believe that little rock…I mean you were dead, mate. Dead as this bloke right here.” Ira kicked McGreenery in the leg. Oscar nodded, rubbing his hand over the fading red mark, as if to feel for himself that the deadly wound was gone. “I was in the dory,” he whispered. Ira cocked his head. “Say again?” Camille lifted her ear from his chest, where she’d wanted to listen to the smooth rhythm of his heart. She looked up at him before hearing its strong beat. “The dory?” Oscar nodded again, eyebrows creased. “I heard your voice. At the cave,” he said to Camille. “This force kept pulling me backward, away from you, like I was being sucked into the ground.” So this was how it had felt for him to die. She remembered the way he’d looked right through her and how it had chilled her to the marrow. Her own brush with death had been different, and somehow better, if death could even be measured in levels of bad or good. The image of her father had drawn her to safety, making her forget her yearning for air. He had been there for her, but she hadn’t been able to do the same for him. All this time, all this trouble, and all she’d wanted was to bring him back, make him proud of the lengths to which she’d gone for him. In the end, she’d failed him miserably. “And then you were gone. Your voice faded, and I was in the dory, adrift in the Tasman, the dawn after the Christina went down,” Oscar continued. Samuel and Ira glanced at each other with marked expressions of doubt and confusion. “But I wasn’t alone.” He gently pulled Camille away from him and gripped her arms. “Your father was with me. He was sitting there, smiling. It all seemed so real. I could taste the salt air, and…and I remember touching the water, and it was cold. It wasn’t like in a dream, when you can’t do those things.” Camille sucked in a deep breath, trying to inflate her crushing lungs. Oscar had seen him, too. She’d give anything to see her father again, to hear his voice, to feel at home by just being in his presence. At least, that’s what she’d once believed. But Camille hadn’t been willing to give up Oscar. Did that mean she loved her father less? Never. She could never love her fatherless. So then why hadn’t her heart chosen him? "Did he say anything?" she asked, anxious to know yet afraid to hear. "It's all jumbled," Oscar said, again shaking his head and rubbing his chest. "I remember him saying a few things. Bits and pieces." Camille looked to Ira and Samuel. Their parted mouths and bugged eyes hung on Oscar's every word. Oscar squinted at the ground and seemed to be working hard to piece together what her father had said on the other side. "I'm still here to guide her?" he said, questioning his own memory. "It doesn't make any sense, I'm sorry." She shook her head, eyes tearing up again. It had been real. He really had come to her in the black water of the underground pool. "No, don't be sorry," she said, tears spilling. "It does make sense. It makes sense to me.

Gideon rose up to his full height, watching their progress as they faded into the night. He then turned his diamondlike eyes until they narrowed on the female Demon who had remained so still and quiet that she had gone unremembered. An interesting feat, considering the remarkable presence of the beauty. “You have grown strong, Legna,” he remarked quietly. “In only a decade? I am sure it has not made much of a difference.” “To teleport me from such a great distance took respectful skill and strength. You well know it.” “Thank you. I shall have to remember to feel weak and fluttery inside now that you complimented me.” Gideon narrowed his eyes coldly on her. “You sound like that acerbic little human. It does not become you.” “I sound like myself,” Legna countered, her irritation crackling through his thoughts as the emotion overflowed her control. “Or have you forgotten that I am far too immature for your tastes?” “I never said such a thing.” “You did. You said I was too young to even begin to understand you.” She lifted her chin, so lost in her wounded pride that she spoke before she thought. “At least I was never so immature that Jacob had to punish me for stalking a human.” Gideon’s spine went extremely straight, his eyes glittering with warning as she hit home on the still-raw wound. “Maturity had nothing to do with that, and you well know it. It is below you to be so petty, Magdelegna.” “I see, so I am groveling around in the gutter now? How childish of me. However can you bear it? I shall leave immediately.” Before Gideon could speak, Legna burst into smoke and sulfur, disappearing but for her laughter that rang through his mind. Gideon sighed, easily acknowledging her that her laughter was a taunt meant to remind him that with her departure, so too went his easy transportation home. Nevertheless, he was more perturbed to realize that he’d once against managed to say all the wrong things to her. Perhaps someday he would manage to speak with her without irritating her. However, he didn’t think that was likely to happen this millennium.

Hey, Large,” Gabe says, flicking me with his towel. “Where you been all day?” “I’ve been around.” I look over at Peter, but he won’t meet my eyes. “I saw you guys on the slopes.” Darrell says, “Then why didn’t you holler at us? I wanted to show off my ollies for you.” Teasingly I say, “Well, I called Peter’s name, but I guess he didn’t hear me.” Peter finally looks me in the eyes. “Nope. I didn’t hear you.” His voice is cold and indifferent and so un-Peterlike, the smile fades from my face. Gabe and Darrell exchange looks like oooh and Gabe says to Peter, “We’re gonna head out to the hot tub,” and they trot off. Peter and I are left standing in the lobby, neither of us saying anything. I finally ask, “Are you mad at me or something?” “Why would I be mad?” And then it’s back to quiet again. I say, “You know, you’re the one who talked me into coming on this trip. The least you could do is talk to me.” “The least you could do was sit next to me on the bus!” he bursts out. My mouth hangs open. “Are you really that mad that I didn’t sit next to you on the bus?” Peter lets out an impatient breath of air. “Lara Jean, when you’re dating someone, there are just…certain things you do, okay? Like sit next to each other on a school trip. That’s pretty much expected.” “I just don’t see what the big deal is,” I say. How can he be this mad over such a tiny thing? “Forget it.” He turns like he’s going to leave, and I grab his sweatshirt sleeve. I don’t want to be in a fight with him; I just want it to be fun and light the way it always is with us. I want him to at least still be my friend. Especially now that we’re at the end. I say, “Come on, don’t be mad. I didn’t realize it was that big of a deal. I swear I’ll sit next to you on the way home, okay?” He purses his lips. “But do you get why I was pissed?” I nod back. “Mm-hmm.” “All right then, you should know that you missed out on mocha sugar donuts.” My mouth falls open. “How’d you get those? I thought the shop didn’t open that early!” “I went out and got them last night specifically for the bus ride,” Peter says. “For you and me.

Mermaid queens didn't often have a reason to move quickly. There were no wars to direct, no assassination attempts to evade, no crowds of clamoring admirers to avoid among the merfolk. In fact, slowness and calm were expected of royalty. So Ariel found herself thoroughly enjoying the exercise as she beat her tail against the water- even as it winded her a little. She missed dashing through shipwrecks with Flounder, fleeing sharks, trying to scoot back home before curfew. She loved the feel of her powerful muscles, the way the current cut around her when she twisted her shoulders to go faster. She hadn't been this far up in years and gulped as the pressure of the deep faded. She clicked her ears, readying them for the change of environment. Colors faded and transformed around her from the dark, heady slate of the ocean bottom to the soothing azure of the middle depths and finally lightening to the electric, magical periwinkle that heralded the burst into daylight. She hadn't planned to break through the surface triumphantly. She wouldn't give it that power. Her plan was to take it slow and rise like a whale. Casually, unperturbed, like Ooh, here I am. But somehow her tail kicked in twice as hard the last few feet, and she exploded into the warm sunlit air like she had been drowning. She gulped again and tasted the breeze- dry in her mouth; salt and pine and far-distant fires and a thousand alien scents.

I want to die young, neither loving nor grieving for anyone; to burst like a golden falling star, to shed my petals while still an unfaded flower. I want those wearied by hostility to find bliss twofold at my gravestone. I want to die young. Bury me to the side, away from the irritating and noisy road, there, where the pussy willow inclines to the waves, where the overgrown bushes grow yellow. So that the dreamy poppies may grow, so that the wind may breathe the fragrances of the distant earth over me. I want to die young. I don't look at the path I've travelled, at the madness of wasted years. I can doze untroubled, once I've sung my final hymn. Let the fire not completely fade; let there remain a memory of what aroused the heart's thirst for life. I want to die young.

We came to a clearing and stopped. Dark green vines with oblong leaves and purple flowers in pairs grew everywhere- under our feet, around tree trunks and small shrubs, in a circle at least thirty feet wide. Fat green-eyed insects buzzed lazily around the blossoms. A heavy, luscious fragrance filled the air. "Honeysuckle!" I plucked a couple of flowers and took a moment to appreciate the dark purple petals that faded to lavender and then white at their base. I brought one to my nose and sniffed. My cousins had a vine like this at their house in India. But these blossoms were gargantuan, each one the size of my palm. I pinched off the green cap that held the petals together, pulled on the little string that was exposed, and tasted the small glob of nectar that glistened at the end. My mouth burst with sweetness.

All things of this nature, apparently unrelated - torrential storm, the burst of salty liquid from a plump and ice-cold raw oyster, the soft skins of wild mushrooms, the quick and violent death of a chicken, the tight and unopened bud of a flower blossom, a pack of wild scruffy dogs a-trot in a field, the thrum of fishing line against the attack of a bream, and peeling away from the delicate frame of its bones from the sweet white meat of its body, a smooth and hard oval nutshell rolled in a palm, the somehow palpable feel of fading light - were in some way sexual for Jane. Not that this was how she would or could have expressed it, especially at that age. She felt it inside herself, though, as deeply and truly as a lover. She fell into the grove's rough, tall grass and into darkness, some charged current running through her in pleasant palpitations of ecstasy.

That—this—is Orion’s secret. It’s not that the ship isn’t working, that we’re never going to make it. It’s that the ship has already arrived. We’re already here! There—there—is the planet that will be our home! It floats, so bright that it hurts my eyes. Giant green landmasses spread out across blue water, with swirls and wisps of clouds twirling over top. At the edge of the planet, where it turns away from the suns and starts to darken, I can see bright flashes of light—bursts of whiteness in the darkness—and I think: Is that lightning? In the center, where the light of the suns makes the planet seem to glow from within, I can see, very distinctly, a continent. A continent. On one edge, it’s cracked and broken like an egg, dark lines snaking deep into the landmass. Rivers. Lots of them. Maybe something too big to be rivers if I can see it from here. Fingers of land stretch out into the sea, and dots of islands are just out of their grasp. That area will be cool all the time, I think. Boats can go along the rivers, up and down. We can swim in the water. Because already, I can see myself living there. Being there. On a planet that looks up at a million suns every night, and at two every day. I want to scream, shout with joy. But the air is so thin now. Too thin. I’ve spent too long looking at Orion’s secret. The boop . . . boop . . . boop . . . fades away. There’s nothing to warn about now. Because there’s no air left. My sight is rimmed with black. My head pulses with my heartbeat, which sounds as loud to me as the alarm once did. I turn from the planet—my planet—and start pulling, hand over hand, against the tether, toward the hatch. The ship bobs in and out of my vision as my whole body jerks. I’m panicked now and fighting to stay awake. I try to suck in air, but there’s nothing there to suck. I’m drowning in nothing.

towheads, the older one only slightly darker. He was looking at a picture of Anders with his arms around his wife and in that photo they were not much older than children themselves. There were pictures of birds, too, a group of prairie chickens standing in a field, an eastern bluebird so vibrant it appeared to have been Photoshopped. Anders took a lot of pictures of birds. Karen pulled off her hat and pushed her straight pale hair behind her ears. The flush that had been in her cheeks from the momentary burst of cold had faded. “This isn’t good news, right?” she said, twisting the rings on her finger, the modest diamond and the platinum band. “I’m glad to see you but I can’t imagine you’re just dropping by to say hello.” And for a split second Marina felt the slightest surge of relief. Of course she would know. Even if she hadn’t heard she would know in that way a soul knows. Marina wanted so badly to put her arms around Karen then,

The stadium went black. A colorful array of fireworks--green, yellow, white--burst into the air. A couple of seconds later, a boom sounded. Everyone oohed and ahhed. Even me. I’m a sucker for fireworks. Jason pulled me closer, and everything I felt for him just seem to swell like those fireworks. It was glorious. Brighter than I’d expected it to be. Bursting forth with all sorts of emotions. Joy because he was mine. Sadness because he would be leaving. A scariness because I didn’t know exactly what the future would hold for us. Red, white, and blue streamers exploded against the black sky. The air popped. I’d hoped for a summer boyfriend. Pick a boy. Any boy. How dumb was that? But somehow I’d lucked out. When it came to boyfriends, I’d somehow managed to hit a home run. I was crazy about Jason. And he was crazy about me. And somehow, we’d make it work. Another explosion of fireworks filled the sky. The colors faded away and then…a burst of red, bang, a burst of white, bang, a burst of blue, bang. I was sure more followed, because I could hear the distant booms but I was no longer watching the fireworks. Jason was kissing me, and we were creating our own.

At the bottom of the passage, behind thick steel doors, I witnessed the true wealth of that country. Others have estimated the value in those rooms of grains, of nuts, of beans; of the millions in canned foie and white asparagus; of the greenhouses under their orange lights, and the vast spice grottos. I can't quote numbers. I can only say what happened when I pressed my face to a wheel of ten-year Parmigiano, how in a burst of grass and ripe pineapple I stood in some green meadow that existed only in the resonance, like a bell's fading peal, of that aroma. I can tell you how it was to cradle wines and vinegars older than myself, their labels crying out the names of lost traditions. And I can tell you of the ferocious crack in my heart when I walked into the deep freezer to see chickens, pigs, rabbits, cows, pheasants, tunas, sturgeon, boars hung two by two. No more boars roamed the world above, no Öland geese, no sharks; the day I climbed the mountain, there vanished wild larks. I knew, then, why the storerooms were guarded as if they held gold, or nuclear armaments. They hid something rarer still: a passage back through time. The animal carcasses were left unskinned. In the circulating air, the extinct revolved on their hooks to greet me.

He raised his wand, but a dull hopelessness was spreading through him: How many more lay dead that he did not yet know about; he felt as though his soul had already half left his body. . . . “HARRY, COME ON!” screamed Hermione. A hundred dementors were advancing, gliding toward them, sucking their way closer to Harry’s despair, which was like a promise of a feast. . . . He saw Ron’s silver terrier burst into the air, flicker feebly, and expire; he saw Hermione’s otter twist in midair and fade; and his own wand trembled in his hand, and he almost welcomed the oncoming oblivion, the promise of nothing, of no feeling. . . . And then a silver hare, a boar, and a fox soared past Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s heads: The dementors fell back before the creatures’ approach. Three more people had arrived out of the darkness to stand beside them, their wands outstretched, continuing to cast their Patronuses: Luna, Ernie, and Seamus. “That’s right,” said Luna encouragingly, as if they were back in the Room of Requirement and this was simply spell practice for the D.A. “That’s right, Harry . . . come on, think of something happy. . . .” “Something happy?” he said, his voice cracked. “We’re all still here,” she whispered, “we’re still fighting. Come on, now. . . .

The next morning I showed up at dad’s house at eight, with a hangover. All my brothers’ trucks were parked in front. What are they all doing here? When I opened the front door, Dad, Alan, Jase, and Willie looked at me. They were sitting around the living room, waiting. No one smiled, and the air felt really heavy. I looked to my left, where Mom was usually working in the kitchen, but this time she was still, leaning over the counter and looking at me too. Dad spoke first. “Son, are you ready to change?” Everything else seemed to go silent and fade away, and all I heard was my dad’s voice. “I just want you to know we’ve come to a decision as a family. You’ve got two choices. You keep doing what you’re doing--maybe you’ll live through it--but we don’t want nothin’ to do with you. Somebody can drop you off at the highway, and then you’ll be on your own. You can go live your life; we’ll pray for you and hope that you come back one day. And good luck to you in this world.” He paused for a second then went on, a little quieter. “Your other choice is that you can join this family and follow God. You know what we stand for. We’re not going to let you visit our home while you’re carrying on like this. You give it all up, give up all those friends, and those drugs, and come home. Those are your two choices.” I struggled to breathe, my head down and my chest tight. No matter what happened, I knew I would never forget this moment. My breath left me in a rush, and I fell to my knees in front of them all and started crying. “Dad, what took y’all so long?” I burst out. I felt broken, and I began to tell them about the sorry and dangerous road I’d been traveling down. I could see my brothers’ eyes starting to fill with tears too. I didn’t dare look at my mom’s face although I could feel her presence behind me. I knew she’d already been through the hell of addiction with her own mother, with my dad, with her brother-in-law Si, and with my oldest brother, Alan. And now me, her baby. I remembered the letters she’d been writing to me over the last few months, reaching out with words of love from her heart and from the heart of the Lord. Suddenly, I felt guilty. “Dad, I don’t deserve to come back. I’ve been horrible. Let me tell you some more.” “No, son,” he answered. “You’ve told me enough.” I’ve seen my dad cry maybe three times, and that was one of them. To see my dad that upset hit me right in the gut. He took me by my shoulders and said, “I want you to know that God loves you, and we love you, but you just can’t live like that anymore.” “I know. I want to come back home,” I said. I realized my dad understood. He’d been down this road before and come back home. He, too, had been lost and then found. By this time my brothers were crying, and they got around me, and we were on our knees, crying. I prayed out loud to God, “Thank You for getting me out of this because I am done living the way I’ve been living.” “My prodigal son has returned,” Dad said, with tears of joy streaming down his face. It was the best day of my life. I could finally look over at my mom, and she was hanging on to the counter for dear life, crying, and shaking with happiness. A little later I felt I had to go use the bathroom. My stomach was a mess from the stress and the emotions. But when I was in the bathroom with the door shut, my dad thought I might be in there doing one last hit of something or drinking one last drop, so he got up, came over, and started banging on the bathroom door. Before I could do anything, he kicked in the door. All he saw was me sitting on the pot and looking up at him while I about had a heart attack. It was not our finest moment. That afternoon after my brothers had left, we went into town and packed up and moved my stuff out of my apartment. “Hey bro,” I said to my roommate. “I’m changing my life. I’ll see ya later.” I meant it.

She closed her eyes and listened to the drone of bees as they moved lazily among the flowering bursts of deep pink hydrangea and delicate tendrils of sweet pea that wound through the basket-bed borders. Although she was still very weak, it was pleasant to sit in warm lethargy, half-drowsing like a cat. She was slow to respond when she heard a sound from the doorway... a single light rap, as if the visitor was reluctant to disrupt her reverie with a loud knock. Blinking her sun-dazzled eyes, Annabelle remained sitting with her legs tucked beneath her. The mass of light speckles gradually faded from her vision, and she found herself staring at Simon Hunt's dark, lean form. He had leaned part of his weight on the doorjamb, bracing a shoulder against it in an unselfconsciously rakish pose. His head was slightly tilted as he considered her with an unfathomable expression. Annabelle's pulse escalated to a mad clatter. As usual, Hunt was dressed impeccably, but the gentlemanly attire did nothing to disguise the virile energy that seemed to emanate from him. She recalled the hardness of his arms and chest as he had carried her, the touch of his hands on her body... oh, she would never be able to look at him again without remembering! "You look like a butterfly that's just flown in from the garden," Hunt said softly.

Cap’n don’t like us tellin’ tales,” another man added. “That’s just ‘round his girl, is all,” the storyteller replied. Camille ceased breathing and widened her eyes. They were right about her father banning such rubbish aboard his ships, but she’d never known she was the reason for it. Why did he feel the need to protect her from them? The few parts of stories she had managed to overhear were entertaining but obvious malarkey to scare young sailors ut of their wits. “If he thinks she’s too fine for them, he shouldn’t bring her along,” Lucius said, his sneer reaching through to his tone of voice. “This is her last time, ain’t it?” another sailor asked. Her stomach cramped at the unwelcome reminder. “If it is, I wager it’ll be Kildare’s, too. He won’t stick ‘round no more,” another chuckled. Camille’s ears perked at Oscar’s name, then reddened at the sailor’s implication that Oscar was there only for her. It was absurd. “Good,” Lucius replied. “Who will be our new first mate?” What were they going on about? Oscar was a perfect first mate. Her father had groomed him for it. Oscar couldn’t just…leave. “Well, it won’t be you, Drake. You can’t even make a shroud knot!” The sailors in the fo’c’sle burst out in laughter. Grabbing her chance to leave, Camille took off down the corridor until their laughter faded with the sighs of the ship.

O God of heaven! The dream of horror, The frightful dream is over now; The sickened heart, the blasting sorrow, The ghastly night, the ghastlier morrow, The aching sense of utter woe. The burning tears that would keep welling, The groan that mocked at every tear, That burst from out their dreary dwelling, As if each gasp were life expelling, But life was nourished by despair. The tossing and the anguished pining, The grinding teeth and starting eye; The agony of still repining, When not a spark of hope was shining From gloomy fate's relentless sky. The impatient rage, the useless shrinking From thoughts that yet could not be borne; The soul that was for ever thinking, Till nature maddened, tortured, sinking, At last refused to mourn. It's over now—and I am free, And the ocean wind is caressing me, The wild wind from the wavy main I never thought to see again. Bless thee, bright Sea, and glorious dome, And my own world, my spirit's home; Bless thee, bless all—I cannot speak; My voice is choked, but not with grief, And salt drops from my haggard cheek Descend like rain upon the heath. How long they've wet a dungeon floor, Falling on flagstones damp and grey: I used to weep even in my sleep; The night was dreadful like the day. I used to weep when winter's snow Whirled through the grating stormily; But then it was a calmer woe, For everything was drear to me. The bitterest time, the worst of all, Was that in which the summer sheen Cast a green lustre on the wall That told of fields of lovelier green. Often I've sat down on the ground, Gazing up to the flush scarce seen, Till, heedless of the darkness round, My soul has sought a land serene. It sought the arch of heaven divine, The pure blue heaven with clouds of gold; It sought thy father's home and mine As I remembered it of old. Oh, even now too horribly Come back the feelings that would swell, When with my face hid on my knee, I strove the bursting groans to quell. I flung myself upon the stone; I howled, and tore my tangled hair; And then, when the first gust had flown, Lay in unspeakable despair. Sometimes a curse, sometimes a prayer, Would quiver on my parchèd tongue; But both without a murmur there Died in the breast from whence they sprung. And so the day would fade on high, And darkness quench that lonely beam, And slumber mould my misery Into some strange and spectral dream, Whose phantom horrors made me know The worst extent of human woe. But this is past, and why return O'er such a path to brood and mourn? Shake off the fetters, break the chain, And live and love and smile again. The waste of youth, the waste of years, Departed in that dungeon thrall; The gnawing grief, the hopeless tears, Forget them—oh, forget them all!

Visions flood in as I watch her chest rise and fall . . . the second our eyes locked in my backyard, the flash of surety I initially dismissed but still rang true through every fiber of my being. She knows you. The long looks we shared across every space, to the minute we snapped on that float before we collided and were created. The same continuous buzz thrumming steadily as we stole glances of each other between the flip of pages as storms raged outside my window. Her fingers tracing my skin, wonder in her eyes, to running my palm reverently over her back—in awe of the heart that beat inside of her, wrapped in her mystery. To the burst of sun that lit her up in my passenger seat as she adjusted her honeysuckle crown. The laughter spilling from us where she lay beneath me, tangled in the sheets before our smiles faded. Hearts raw and aching as we locked together, lost in our connection, chests bouncing in unison due to the tie that bound us. That still binds us. A fate we created together. A story I’ll continue to relive without regret. Falling for her was worth hitting bottom—and every single ache that comes with it. Reaching out, I trace the curve of her cheek. “You gutted me, baby,” I croak in confession as my chest caves. “But I can’t say I don’t deserve it . . .” I falter, grunting through the pain consuming me. “You thrive on love, and I . . . we fucking starved your heart . . . we just left you here.

Where is everyone?" Alec shrugged, striding across the hall as if he owned the place, which Magnus supposed he sort of did. "I expect everyone's off gathering gear and weapons. We should just go find my mother." "How do you propose to find her?" Magnus said. "Ah," said Alec, "the Institute has a very old magic woven into its walls. I shall now use it to commune with my mother, wherever she might be found." He put his hands around his mouth and bellowed at the top of his lungs. "MOOOOOOOOOM!" Alec's voice reverberated impressively against the stone walls. Max giggled and yelled, "Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!" alongside Alec. The sound faded away and Magnus waited. "Well?" he said, and Alec held up a finger. After a moment, there was a flare, and a fire-message appeared in front of him. He plucked it from the air and opened it, giving Magnus a superior look. "'She's in the library,'" he read. A second fire-message appeared, in the same spot as the first. Alec opened it. "'Did you know you can send fire-messages within the Institute?'" he read. "'I just found out.'" He looked at Magnus in bewilderment. "Of course I knew that." "To the library, then?" said Magnus. A third fire-message appeared. Max lunged to try to grab it, but it was too far above his head. Magnus grabbed that one and read, "'I love fire-messages, have a great day, your friend, Simon Lovelace, Shadowhunter.' Can we go?" They heard a fourth one burst behind them as they left by the hall door, but neither of them looked back at it.

You see, I don’t have a personality. I’m so dull inside. Faded...” It’s no use fighting it, and it drives me mad with the unassailability of its tenets. “Take Ginger, for example...” That is, take someone for whom controlling her emotions is a daily losing battle, who bursts into fireworks at the slightest touch or even without it, jumps from laughter to tears and back with nothing in between, wears all her loves and hatreds on her sleeve: now that’s beautiful, that’s feminine, that’s attractive, like bright patterns of a butterfly’s wing, it’s a whirlwind, a torrent, a trap; but very few people can stand Ginger’s flamboyant personality for more than a couple of hours at a time, even when her feelings are directed not at them but elsewhere. Long live Noble, Noble’s patience and everything else that he has and I don’t, I guess this is something that he knows and understands, because he used to be that way too, until he went in for a stint where the real crazies live, and yes, they do look great together, this couple always at the point of combustion, firehaired Isolde and sapphire-eyed Tristan, both on the edge, both wide open, breathe in deeply and hide the breakables, but one thing I don’t understand in all of this is why should anyone envy it and agonize about it, I could never understand this and in my attempts to convince Mermaid rose almost to the Noble-Gingerish heights of passion, except it always ended up the same. “It’s nerves, simply nerves, and in this case they hang out like live wires, so anyone passing by trips them; it’s got nothing — nothing — to do with personality and its richness, you silly little girl!

Then she bent her head over at the waist and tossed her head around to separate the curls. The elevator stopped and she heard the door open. She straightened up to find some big guy in a ball cap and sunglasses right in her face, charging into the elevator before she could even get out of it. He had both hands full of carry-out bags—Mexican food, judging from the smell. She looked at them, her mouth watering. Yep. Enrique’s. The best in town. He whirled around to punch the door-close button. “Hey,” she said. “I’m getting off here.” Some girl outside in the lobby yelled, “We know it’s you, Chase. You shouldn’t lie to us.” Startled, Elle looked at the guy’s face and saw, just before he reached for her, that it really was Chase Lomax in ragged shorts and flip-flops. He grabbed her up off her feet and bent his head. Found her mouth with his. “Wait for us,” another girl yelled. The sound of running feet echoed off the marble floor, slid to a stop. “Oh, no!” Kissing her, without so much as a “Hi, there, Elle.” Burning her up. She tried to struggle but he had both her arms pinned to her sides. And suddenly she wanted to stay right where she was forever because the shock was wearing off and she was starting to feel. A lot more than she ever had before. The door slid closed. The girls began banging on it. “We know your room number, Chase, honey,” they yelled. “See you there.” Loud giggles. “We’ll show you a real good time.” The elevator moved up, the voices faded away. But Chase kept on kissing her. She had to make him stop it. Right now. Who did he think he was, anyway? Somebody who could send lightning right through her whole body, that’s who. Lightning so strong it shook her to her toes. He had to stop this now. But she couldn’t move any part of her body. Except her lips. And her tongue . . . When he finally let her go she pulled back and away, fighting to get a handle on her breathing. “What’s the matter?” he demanded. Her blood rushed through her so fast it made her dizzy. “You’re asking me? It’s more like, what’s the matter with you? How’d you get the idea you could get away with kissing me like that without even bothering to say hello?” She touched her lips. They were still on fire. “You have got a helluva nerve, Chase Lomax.” He grinned at her as he took off his shades. He hung them in the neck of his huge, baggy T-shirt that had a bucking bull and rider with Git’R’Done written above it. He wore ragged denim shorts and flip-flops, for God’s sake. Chase Lomax was known for always being starched and ironed, custom-booted and hatted. “I asked if you’re all right because you were bent over double shaking your head when the doors opened,” he said. “Like you were in pain or something.” “I was drying my hair.” He stared, then burst out laughing. “Oh, well, then.” His laugh was contagious but she wouldn’t let herself join in. He could not get away with this scot-free. He’d shaken her up pretty good. “Oh. I see. You thought I needed help, so you just grabbed me and kissed me senseless. Is that how you treat somebody you think’s in pain?” He grinned that slow, charming grin of his again. “It made you feel better. Didn’t it?” He held her gaze and wouldn’t let it go. She must be a sight. She could feel heat in her cheeks, so her face must be red. Plus she was gasping, trying to slow her breathing. And her heart-beat. “You nearly scared me to death to try to get rid of those girls. And it was all wasted. They’re coming to your room.” Something flashed deep in his brown eyes. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings. I don’t think it was wasted,” he drawled. “I liked that kiss.

The Unknown Soldier A tale to tell in bloody rhyme, A story to last ’til the dawn of end’s time. Of a loving boy who left dear home, To bear his countries burdens; her honor to sow. –A common boy, I say, who left kith and kin, To battle der Kaiser and all that was therein. The Arsenal of Democracy was his kind, –To make the world safe–was their call and chime. Trained he thus in the far army camps, Drilled he often in the march and stamp. Laughed he did with new found friends, Lived they together for the noble end. Greyish mottled images clipp’ed and hack´ed– Black and white broke drum Ʀ…ɧ..λ..t…ʮ..m..ȿ —marching armies off to ’ttack. Images scratched, chopped, theatrical exaggerate, Confetti parades, shouts of high praise To where hell would sup and partake with all bon hope as the transport do them take Faded icons board the ship– To steel them away collaged together –joined in spirit and hip. Timeworn humanity of once what was To broker peace in eagles and doves. Mortal clay in the earth but to grapple and smite As warbirds ironed soar in heaven’s light. All called all forward to divinities’ kept date, Heroes all–all aces and fates. Paris–Used to sing and play at some cards, A common Joe everybody knew from own heart. He could have been called ‘the kid’ by the ‘old man,’ But a common private now taking orders to stand. Receiving letters from his shy sweet one, Read them over and over until they faded to none. Trained like hell with his Commander-in-Arms, –To avoid the dangers of a most bloody harm. Aye, this boy was mortal, true enough said, He could be one of thousands alive but now surely dead. How he sang and cried and ate the gruel of rations, And grumbled as soldiers do at war’s great contagions. Out–out to the battle this young did go, To become a man; the world to show. (An ocean away his mother cried so– To return her boy safe as far as the heavens go). Lay he down in trenched hole, With balls bursting overhead upon the knoll. Listened hardnfast to the “Sarge” bearing the news, —“We’re going over soon—” was all he knew. The whistle blew; up and over they went, Charging the Hun, his life to be spent (“Avoid the gas boys that’ll blister yer arse!!”). Running through wires razored and deadened trees, Fell he into a gouge to find in shelter of need (They say he bayoneted one just as he–, face to face in War’s Dance of trialed humanity). A nameless sonnuvabitch shell then did untimely RiiiiiiiP the field asunder in burrrstzʑ–and he tripped. And on the field of battle’s blood did he die, Faceless in a puddle as blurrs of ghosting men shrieked as they were fleeing by–. Perished he alone in the no man’s land, Surrounded by an army of his brother’s teeming bands . . . And a world away a mother sighed, Listened to the rain and lay down and cried. . . . Today lays the grave somber and white, Guarded decades long in both the dark and the light. Silent sentinels watch o’er and with him do walk, Speak they neither; their duty talks. Lone, stark sentries perform the unsmiling task, –Guarding this one dead–at the nation’s bequest. Cared over day and night in both rain or sun, Present changing of the guard and their duty is done (The changing of the guard ’tis poetry motioned A Nation defining itself–telling of rifles twirl-clicking under the intensest of devotions). This poem–of The Unknown, taken thus, Is rend eternal by Divinity’s Iron Trust. How he, a common soldier, gained the estate Of bearing his countries glory unto his unknown fate. Here rests in honored glory a warrior known but to God, Now rests he in peace from the conflict path he trod. He is our friend, our family, brother, our mother’s son –belongs he to us all, For he has stood in our place–heeding God’s final call.

Standing at the window overlooking the lawn, Jordan and Alexandra Townsende watched the couple heading toward them. “If you’d asked me to name the last man on earth I would have expected to fall head over heels for a slip of a girl, it would have been Ian Thornton,” he told her. His wife heard that with a sidewise look of extreme amusement. “If I’d been asked, I rather think I would have named you.” “I’m sure you would have,” he said, grinning. He saw her smile fade, and he put his arm around her waist, instantly concerned that her pregnancy was causing her discomfort. “Is it the babe, darling?” She burst out laughing and shook her head, but she sobered again almost instantly. “Do you think,” she asked pensively, “he can be trusted not to hurt her? He’s done so much damage that I-I just cannot like him, Jordan. He’s handsome, I’ll grant you that, extraordinarily handsome-“ “Not that handsome,” Jordan said, stung. And this time Alexandra dissolved in mirth. Turning, she wrapped her arms around him and kissed him soundly. “Actually, he rather reminds me of you,” she said, “in his coloring and height and build.” “I hope that hasn’t anything to do with why you can’t like him,” her husband teased. “Jordan, do stop. I’m worried, really I am. He’s-well, he almost frightens me. Even though he seems very civilized on the surface, there’s a forcefulness, maybe even a ruthlessness beneath his polished manners. And he stops at nothing when he wants something. I saw that yesterday when he came to the house and persuaded Elizabeth to agree to marry him.” Turning, Jordan looked at her with a mixture of intent interest, surprise, and amusement. “Go on,” he said. “Well, at this particular moment he wants Elizabeth, and I can’t help fearing it’s a whim.” “You wouldn’t have thought that if you’d seen his face blanch the other night when he realized she was going to try to brave society without his help.” “Really? You’re certain?” “Positive.” “Are you certain you know him well enough to judge him?” “Absolutely certain,” he averred. “How well do you know him?” “Ian,” Jordan said with a grin, “is my sixth cousin.” “Your what? You’re joking! Why didn’t you tell me before?

I love you so fucking much that I think my heart could burst out of my chest.

of black starlings burst from the maples lining the road. I flinched, sucking in a sharp breath of cold air and resisted the urge to drop to the cracked sidewalk. Surprise faded quickly and guilt churned deep within my gut. A sickening shame that was almost unbearable. So much regret. Angry at myself, I shoved the feeling aside. Emotions would only weaken me. A woman with gray hair who was walking her poodle next to me froze, her gaze pinned to the café. “My God, I think they’re being robbed!

Do you mean to tell me that right now, my ward is in an underground club, surrounded by ruffians, gambling on an illegal prizefight—which the constable could break up at any time?” Ian nodded. “Not to mention the fact that the crowd often becomes unruly after a particularly diverting match. Fisticuffs are guaranteed every night.” He rose from his seat and beckoned a servant to fetch their coats and top hats. “I suppose we ought to go fetch them now, shall we?” A haze of red encompassed Vincent’s sight as he donned his coat. “How can you be so calm about this? Our women are in danger!” “Nonsense.” Ian chuckled. “Angelica is capable of defending herself. Also, Rafe won’t let any physical harm come to them. However, I am concerned with the possibility of them being thrown into Newgate for breaking numerous laws just by being at that club.” The duke’s words faded as Vincent strode out of White’s, determined to snatch Lydia out of that hovel so fast her head would spin. He was just about to take off in a burst of preternatural speed when Ian clapped a hand on his shoulder. “We must take a hackney.” “But—” Ian waved off Vincent’s protest. “For one thing, if a duke and an earl arrive without a coach, people will take notice. For another, you cannot use your speed to remove Lydia from the club without eliciting the same response. And it simply would not do to be seen walking back to our neighborhood with Miss Price slung over your shoulder like a sack of grain.” “Very well.” Vincent inclined his head in grudging acknowledgment of Ian’s logic. The duke nodded and flagged down a coach. “And remember, we must treat them as young men. We cannot risk revealing their identities, or they truly will be in danger.” Although

In the passing of an instant everything stopped and there he stood at the bottom of the ocean in perfect stillness. He gazed into a strange and eerie light that seemed to draw closer as the fear in his heart faded. An amazing tunnel was extending towards him, smooth shiny walls in the night. Reaching his hand out to touch it he wondered; if he were to die in that moment, where would the life inside him go? His heart, bursting with unspent love and the breathtaking happiness in his soul, just disappearing into the ocean. Two more handfuls of salt dissolving in a world barely able to justify its own existence. He heard a rushing sound as the sea inhaled again just before it struck him in the chest. A wall of sand and stones that blew him off his feet and sent him back out, his last thought escaping him in a long trail of bubbles. ‘Stop fighting now Thomas—it’s over.

Another explosion of fireworks filled the sky. The colors faded away and then…a burst of red, bang, a burst of white, bang, a burst of blue, bang. I was sure more followed, because I could hear the distant booms but I was no longer watching the fireworks. Jason was kissing me, and we were creating our own.

Kissing her all the while, he stroked toward her center, tangling for a few brief seconds in the nest of short curls he found there before slipping a single finger between the tender folds of her femininity. Wet heat dampened his hand, a reaction he seemed to expect and enjoy, the fragrant moisture turning her slick against his touch. She gasped, the sound muffled against his lips as he tilted her hips a little more to slide deeper, using his fingers, and even the heel of his hand, in ways that drove every rational thought from her brain. Tiny breaths panted from her mouth as he caressed her in the most shockingly delicious manner, her initial embarrassment fading against a compulsive need for more. Breaking their kiss, he pressed her face against his neck. "Let go," he murmured into her ear. "Let yourself fly." And after another pair of rapturous, stroking caresses, she did- her entire body shuddering in a great, cataclysmic burst of pleasure that set every nerve and sinew afire. He held her as she shook, her cries muffled against the starched linen of his neck cloth.

They headed across the meadow, passing groups of students eating lunch. A mottled bird that looked like a cross between a chicken and a pheasant burst from the undergrowth. Ash watched it flutter into the trees, then land in the bushes. “What in the world…?” Vale followed his gaze to where the bird waddled through the undergrowth. “It’s a spruce grouse.” Ash stared into the trees. A few steps away from the meadow, the light dropped by half. “What did you call it again?” “Spruce grouse is the official name, though they’re sometimes called prairie chickens or fool hens.” Ash chuckled. “Fool hens, huh?” “Yeah. People think they’re kind of dumb—the way they let other animals get close to them. They’re pretty mellow.” Ash watched it as it faded back into the autumn foliage, the plumage a match to the brown and orange leaves. “How do you know all this stuff?” “I don’t know,” she said. “I read things, I guess.” “I know that, but where’d you learn the stuff about birds?” “I’ve got a couple books on wildlife. Books on the woods, and on camping, and survival, and…” Vale shrugged. “I just read a lot of stuff. Okay?” Ash grinned. “Pretty cool.

His words explained, but they did not convince. Was this sudden-bursting glory only the sun rising behind storm clouds? She could see the clouds moving while they were being colored. The universal gray surrendered under some magic paint brush. The rifts widened, and the gloom of the pale-gray world seemed to vanish. Beyond the billowy, rolling, creamy edges of clouds, white and pink, shone the soft exquisite fresh blue sky. And a blaze of fire, a burst of molten gold, sheered up from behind the rim of cloud and suddenly poured a sea of sunlight from east to west. It trans-figured the round foothills. They seemed bathed in ethereal light, and the silver mists that overhung them faded while Carley gazed, and a rosy flush crowned the symmetrical domes. Southward along the horizon line, down-dropping veils of rain, just touched with the sunrise tint, streamed in drifting slow movement from cloud to earth. To the north the range of foothills lifted toward the majestic dome of Sunset Peak, a volcanic upheaval of red and purple cinders, bare as rock, round as the lower hills, and wonderful in its color. Full in the blaze of the rising sun it flaunted an unchangeable front. Carley understood now what had been told her about this peak. Volcanic fires had thrown up a colossal mound of cinders burned forever to the hues of the setting sun. In every light and shade of day it held true to its name. Farther north rose the bold bulk of the San Francisco Peaks, that, half lost in the clouds, still dominated the desert scene. Then as Carley gazed the rifts began to close. Another transformation began, the reverse of what she watched. The golden radiance of sunrise vanished, and under a gray, lowering) coalescing pall of cloud the round hills returned to their bleak somberness, and the green desert took again its cold sheen.

I never thought I’d envy you,” she said. “Never in a million years. You’re so composed, so serious. So cold.” His hands balled into fists. How dare she? How dare she burst into his room and kiss him and dive into a river and invade his dreams and make him go shopping and throw herself headlong into danger and lean back against a pear tree in a dress the exact color of her hair kissed by fading sunlight? How dare she make him forget? Damn it all. Damn her for making him care. “I want to go cold,” she said. “All these feelings—they’re like flames inside me. I’m tired of getting burnt. I don’t want them anymore. I want to put out the fire and just go cold. I never imagined I’d envy you, but today …” Her voice wavered. “Today, I do.

Everything is only you! Sometimes my heart wants to escape with my head, But my heart beats in all directions tend to tread, And my mind that only thinks of you, Eventually lets my heart beats become an echo of you, Where your memories lie everywhere, and stare at me, From every corner, every side, every direction, it is just you that I see, And then my love Irma, I love you, Quietly in my heart beats and my mind creates visual glimpses of you, Which appear and fade like bubbles in the sea of time, And whenever a bubble of excitement is about to reach its prime, It bursts and the bubble sprays infinite droplets of memories bearing an image of you, And then how I miss you! Maybe you will never know it, That shall be the tragedy of time and feelings of love which are forfeit, Still I shall think of you and love to create this bubble with you, And feel the droplets of your kisses, which are but distant memories of you, Time travels at its pace but human memories somehow master the art of lying in a timeless space, Where the moments from the past through the lanes of mind towards every heartbeat pace, It is so with me, yet I love to love you, Whenever I travel in the train of time I wish to journey only unto you, So let the memories be there Irma and let the feelings stay true, Let the present know, that it is past that rules and leaves a clue, For the lovers to pick, just like I in every present seek you, This clue from the past, makes me find you in the present, that Universe creates only for me and you, In every bubble of memory that bursts and creates endless droplets of memories, Which cover my body and soul with these time’s pleasantries, Where you grow over me like a skin of feelings and I feel you, Like a touch growing all over me, where everything is now you and only you!

After an age of running, the blasts grew quiet and impotent. She saw her brothers and father fade into even tinier specks. She thought her heart would burst as she curled into the warm and welcoming shoulder of her new love, the love she had observed unnoticed for so long. Was it shock or blood loss or just dawning realization? Her old life was over.

I stared into her eyes, and it was then I noticed that the same sadness I had in me, she had in her. I’ve always believed the eyes cannot lie. They hold the truths we are unable or unwilling to speak. Her eyes full, large, and bursting with pain. But pain from what? Her smile faded a bit as she waited for me to speak. She stared back into my eyes, and I like to think she recognized the hurt and loneliness in mine.

When time bends There, placed adjacent to each other, Stood everything and nothing, There was everywhere and nowhere together, And even forever and never existed as one thing, And fate asked me to choose one combination, Whatever I chose, I chose and didn't choose as well, Because with everything there was nothing too as its destination, With everywhere there was nowhere, similar to heaven and hell, And forever was accompanied by never, So what to choose I did not know, Although it was not an experience newer, But it was a new realization, about which something all your life you know, It was then I said “everything and nothing!” And fate laughed and said, “very wisely chosen! Because now with everything I shall offer you everything, Everything, everywhere, forever, life, joy, beauty and a height where your heart has never risen, But everything is followed by nothing, nowhere, never, sorrow, All that you may seek not so often, But at least you will experience darkness after having experienced the brightest glow, Because without knowing nine one can never arrive at ten, So, well chosen because had you chosen forever, It might have been that darkness visited you first, And then it would have been so forever, And if you had chosen everywhere it too may have been an unpleasant burst!” I wondered what it meant, But as I grew old I realised in everything lies true eternity, So this wish still pays my every rent, For all my desires and wishes of joy and beauty, Because everything is never ending, By the time it shall reach its end and become nothing, I shall be long gone, a summer flower already fading, Then it does not matter whether it is something, everything or nothing, And every life should be about everything, Only then we get to experience joy and beauty that never ends, To be our companions beyond that unseen world of that malign feeling, Where everything becomes nothing, everywhere becomes nowhere, and forever becomes never, where time bends, So choose everything whenever life offers you a chance, Because one day it will surely end, So when you get the chance, perform your dance, Because there shall be enough time later, to repair and mend, All nothings, all nevers, all nowheres and all ends, Therefore, the day sun shines, assume it shines just for you, Because when time finally bends, It bends for all of us, not just for me, but you too!

Leaving town and starting a new life was turning out to be a bigger challenge that she'd expected. She'd had that manic burst of energy last week - that exilarating vision of her blond pseudonymous future - but it had faded quickly, replaced by an all-too-familiar inertia

A sudden blast rang through the air, vibrating the glass windows. A flock of black starlings burst from the maples lining the road. I flinched, sucking in a sharp breath of cold air and resisted the urge to drop to the cracked sidewalk. Surprise faded quickly and guilt churned deep within my gut. A sickening shame that was almost unbearable. So much regret. Angry at myself, I shoved the feeling aside. Emotions would only weaken me. A woman with gray hair who was walking her poodle next to me froze, her gaze pinned to the café. “My God, I think they’re being robbed!” I didn’t respond but continued down the sidewalk, forced my feet forward as she fumbled with her cell phone. Taking in a deep breath, I slipped the ear buds of my iPod into my ears. Home. I had to make it home before I was late, before nerves got the better of me and I

In the passing of an instant everything stopped and there he stood at the bottom of the ocean in perfect stillness. He gazed into a strange and eerie light that seemed to draw closer as the fear in his heart faded. An amazing tunnel was extending towards him, smooth shiny walls in the night. Reaching his hand out to touch it he wondered, if he were to die in that moment, where would the life inside him go. His heart, bursting with unspent love and the breathtaking happiness in his soul, just disappearing into the ocean. Two more handfuls of salt dissolving in a world barely able to justify its own existence. He heard a rushing sound as the sea inhaled again just before it struck him in the chest. A wall of sand and stones that blew him off his feet and sent him back out, his last thought escaping him in a long trail of bubbles. ‘Stop fighting now Thomas—it’s over.

Once Alex enters the room, I forget I’m even hungry and nearly drop my plate. A helpful servant scoops it up from my hands. I see him in profile, his long lean body in stark shades of black and white: knee-high socks, dark, well-fitted pants, a jacket the color of midnight, and a snowy-white cravat as pressed and starched as ever. I’d think he looked entirely too formal, except my own dress is at least as fancy. Today, it’s appropriate. As much as it would be great to see him in a T-shirt, jeans, and ball cap, the formal attire simply suits him. He surveys the room as the others take notice of his presence, but before they can bombard him, his eyes sweep across to me and then stop. His lips give way to the slightest of smiles, and then he’s heading straight toward me, leaving a gaggle of disappointed faces in his wake. “Do I look okay?” I whisper to Emily, unable to take my eyes off of him long enough to check. She squeezes my hand. “You look…” “Stunning,” Alex finishes as he arrives in front of me. “Your Grace,” I say, for the first time, and curtsy. He looks amused that I’ve addressed him so formally. “My lady.” He bows, a deeper bow than I’ve ever seen him do. I rise and look him in the eye again. “I thought you said I wasn’t a lady.” He smirks. “I thought you said you were.” We smile at one another, and the room fades around me. “Save the next dance?” I nod. “Wonderful. I shall find you then.” And then he leaves me with Emily, and I finally know what a swoon is as I grab her elbow. “I thought he might ravish you right here on the floor,” she says with a giggle. “Emily!” “What?” And then I can’t help it; I burst into a fit of giggles with her, until my sides ache and I can hardly breathe. A few guests stare as they pass us--I’m betting such behavior is frowned upon--but I find that I don’t even care. It’s been so long since I’ve had a friend who made me feel like I could be myself. Ironic, since I’m Rebecca here, but it’s still invigorating and exhilarating, and all we’re doing is standing here laughing like total lunatics. It’s definitely against Victoria’s Rules for Proper Young Ladies. But I don’t care. I am me. Whether that is someone they like or someone they despise, I am who I am, and that’s the truth. When have I ever been this sure of myself? “Is everything all right?” Emily stops giggling. “Yes. I--” I pause, taking a breath. “I’m…better than all right.” I glance around at the beautiful, sparkling ballroom and then back at Emily’s smiling face. “I’m perfect.

We are constantly murmuring, muttering, scheming, or wondering to ourselves under our breath,” wrote Epstein. “ ‘I like this. I don’t like that. She hurt me. How can I get that? More of this, no more of that.’ Much of our inner dialogue is this constant reaction to experience by a selfish, childish protagonist. None of us has moved very far from the seven-year-old who vigilantly watches to see who got more.” There were also delightful passages about the human tendency to lurch headlong from one pleasurable experience to the next without ever achieving satisfaction. Epstein totally nailed my habit of hunting around my plate for the next bite before I’d tasted what was in my mouth. As he described it, “I do not want to experience the fading of the flavor—the colorless, cottony pulp that succeeds that spectacular burst over my taste buds.” Prior

F or a decade after the bursting of the debt bubble in 1837, business conditions were depressed in the United States. The number of banks available for financing speculative adventures declined. Then, after another 10 years, public memory faded again.

How better to experience the hours of darkness than at the back of your boat with a cup of tea in hand as she forges through the water, painting excited light on to the inky black as phosphorescence bursts into life at the bow and slowly fades its farewell in the wake? The deck is like a reflection of the stars in the sky as the phosphorescence glows in its random resting places. I feel so alive when I am out there with an unblemished horizon and the musical rush of water passing the hull. The

Oh, little girl,” a sinister voice rang out in the hall behind me, and every hair on my body rose. “Have you finally come out to play with the rest of us?” A low growl built up in my captor’s chest, and my body started shaking uncontrollably. “I won’t bite . . . hard.” My captor pressed his body closer to mine, and after slowly moving his hand away from my mouth, moved close to whisper in my ear. I cringed back but couldn’t go far. “Don’t say anything.” “Where’d you go, you little bitch?” the voice said again, but this time the sinister tone was laced with hatred. When my captor pulled back, his face was murderous. Tears sprang to my eyes, but I somehow knew that I needed to listen to him. Suddenly his head turned to the side, and I froze . . . not wanting to see the man that voice belonged to. “Damn, bro, already claiming her?” “Leave,” my captor growled. “Now.” “No need to get touchy. I’ll wait for my go at her.” “I said get. The fuck. Out.” “I’m going . . . I’m going. You better keep an eye on your bitch. Because next time she’s alone, Marco might be the one to find her . . . and you know how bad Marco wants her.” “No one touches her.” His body was vibrating, and I looked up at his face to see the barely concealed rage. “For now,” the voice said in a mocking tone. “Possessive doesn’t suit you. You might want to be careful with that, you know how we all like a challenge.” With a deep laugh, I heard footsteps retreating from us. “I’ll be seeing you soon, sweetheart.” A few seconds passed before my captor looked back at me. His face was dark when he whispered, “Do not run from me again, understood?” Not waiting for me to respond, he pushed off me, grabbed my arm, and started walking out of the kitchen. I shrank into him when he suddenly stopped, and we came face-to-face with three men. “Look what we have here,” one of them said. “Told you I’d be seeing you soon, sweetheart,” another said, and I would have recognized that disturbing voice anywhere. “We need her.” The third spoke directly to my captor, his eyes never once looking at me. The man holding my arm pulled me behind him. A move the first two didn’t miss. “You’ve gotten by fine without her, Marco. I’m sure you’ll figure something out.” Moving me to his other side, and closer to the wall, he began walking again. Not four steps later, pain spread over my scalp, and a cry burst from my chest as I was yanked back by my hair. My captor’s arm moved around my waist as he put himself between Marco and me, and his other arm was straight in front of him with a gun pointed at Marco’s head. “Someone’s moody.” Marco never flinched. But a smile slowly crossed his face as he let my hair fall from his fingers. “You have beautiful hair. What a shame.” “No. One. Touches her,” my captor said low, his words full of warning. “Just fuck her and get that pent-up anger out of your system already,” he said to my captor, his smile never fading. Marco stepped back to the other two guys, his hands raising up in mock-surrender. “Until next time.” My

Aubade" Beyond the limits of myself, there is you, a wind-wave of fading light on a square of cottage pane, a final mix of golden prairie in my mind. I am the impoverished heir of blackened gum quarters, your crosswalk & roofline of foul pigeons. Dear Sibilant Stir & Kick: see that tall grass on the ceiling, that burst of dusted corn, that sky advancing its phalanx of irritable clouds? I rest my hand on your thigh beneath its silk chemise, so like a mid-surge surf of turquoise sky stilled. Whichever way your shoulder moves, there's joy.

She yanked open the door, and her smile faded. The same Indian who had wanted to trade two horses for her was standing on the apple crate that served as a front step, his black hair dripping with water, his calico shirt so wet that his copper skin showed through in places. “No house!” he said. Lily was paralyzed for a moment. Here it was, she thought, the moment she’d been warned about. She was going to be scalped, or ravaged, or carried off to an Indian village. Maybe all three. She cast a desperate glance toward the shutgun, at the same time smiling broadly at the Indian. “I’m terribly sorry,” she said, “but of course you can see that there is a house.” “Woman go away!” the Indian insisted. Lily’s heart was flailing in her throat like a bird trapped in a chimney, but she squared her shoulders and put out her chin. “I’m not going anywhere, you rude man,” she replied. “This is my land, and I have the papers to prove it!” The Indian spouted a flock of curses; Lily knew the words for what they were only because of their tone. She started to close the door. “If you’re going to be nasty,” she said, “you’ll just have to leave.” Undaunted, the red man pushed past Lily and strode right over to the stove. He got a cup from the shelf, filled it with coffee, and took a sip. He grimaced. “You got firewater?” he demanded. “Better with firewater.” Lily had never been so frightened or so angry in her life. With one hand to her bosom she edged toward the shotgun. “No firewater,” she said apologetically, “but there is a little sugar. There”—she pointed—“in the blue bowl.” When her unwanted guest turned around to look for the sugar, Lily lunged for the shotgun and cocked it. There was no shell in the chamber; she could only hope the Indian wouldn’t guess. “All right, you,” she said, narrowing her eyes and pointing the shotgun. “Get out of here right now. Just ride away and there won’t be any trouble.” The Indian stared at her for a moment, then had the audacity to burst out laughing. “The major’s right about you,” he said in perfectly clear English. “You are a hellcat.” Now it was Lily who stared, slowly lowering the shotgun. “So that’s why Caleb wasn’t alarmed that day when you and your friends rode up and made all that fuss about the land. He knows you.” “The name’s Charlie Fast Horse,” the man said, offering his hand. Lily’s blood was rushing to her head like lava flowing to the top of an erupting volcano. “Why, that polecat—that rounder—that son-of-a—” Charlie Fast Horse set his coffee aside and held out both hands in a plea for peace. “Calm down, now, Miss Lily,” he pleaded. “It was just a harmless little joke, after all.” “When I see that scoundrel again I’m going to peel off his hide!” Charlie was edging toward the door. “Lord knows I’d like to warm myself by your fire, Miss Lily, but I’ve got to be going. No, no—don’t plead with me to stay.” “Get out of here!” Lily screamed, and Charlie Fast Horse ran for his life. Obviously he didn’t know the shotgun wasn’t loaded. The

A Song for Yellow Daffodils They're looking at me brightly through the rain so bright that they replace for me the sun. And surely nothing of the mourning rainfall can mar the shining yellow joy at all. Bursting with laughter, they bend amid the green, which cleanly fresh accompanies their laughter. I place my song at their feet to-day. To-day they're bringing joy my way. (June 30, 1941) p. 6

am the Rain I am the rain and I am walking barefoot along, from land to land. In my hair gently plays the wind with his slender, brownish hand. My sheer dress is made of cobwebs, it is grayer than gray sorrow. I am alone, though here and there I fitfully play with an ailing doe. After these two stanzas, she brings forth her feelings of a young girl, who weeps lonely in the night. Besides the sorrows of everybody around her, the loneliness and longings and her awakening as a girl in love burst out in deeply sad tones. I hold these ropes tight in my hand, and on them there are strung and kept all the tears, which pale girls lonely eyes have ever wept. I've snatched them all from slender girls, who late at night trod hand in hand with longing, on lonely roads, with fright.

it seems like the blink of an eye. His little face – the face that was fading slightly, like a photo greying over time – bursts into technicolour. I close my eyes, trying to imprint the sharpness of the image on my brain before I lose it again. For just a second, it feels like he’s right there in

I know I'm the only one capable of saving myself, but when your fight has been burnt out for so long, how do you fan the flames that don't exist? I'm just a girl falling and fading, waiting for her Phoenix to burst forth and catch herself before she hits the ground. I have to be the one to catch myself.

And then, seconds later, she collapsed—as my father buried his sword through her delicate form in his final burst of strength. I let out a strangled sound, stumbling forward. Caduan caught my arm. It was the only thing that kept me from falling through a crack in the floor. In the past, Caduan broke free from the stunned Blades who held him and ran to Orscheid’s side. My father died without a final word, hatred on his face. How easily he discarded his love even for his favorite, perfect daughter. Orscheid was such a delicate creature. She fell like a handful of flower petals. My mother wept. Caduan tried to stop her bleeding, tried to mend the wound, silent in utter concentration. Her blood and my father’s ran down the stairs together. The image froze. Wavered. Faded. “I tried to save her,” Caduan murmured. His voice felt too real, too close, compared to the memory. “Her life was worth too much to die alongside him.” Why was my voice so strange? It cracked over the words. “Why would she—how could she—

But these glittering visions, all these visions which came surging and rushing towards them, which flowed in unstoppable bursts, these vertiginous images of speed, light and triumph, seemed to them at first to be connected to each other in a surprisingly necessary sequence, in an unbounded harmony. It was as if before their bedazzled eyes a finished landscape had suddenly risen up, a total picture of the world, a coherent structure which they could at last grasp and decipher. At first it felt as if their sensations were multiplied by ten, as if their faculties of sight and sense had been amplified to infinite powers, as if a magical bliss accompanied their smallest gesture, kept in time with their steps, suffused their lives: the world was coming towards them, they were going towards the world, they would go on and on discovering it. Their lives were love and ecstasy. Their passion knew no bounds; their freedom was without constraint. But they were choking under the mass of detail. The visions blurred, became jumbles; they could retain only a few vague and muddled bits, tenuous, persistent, brainless, impoverished wisps. It was not a serene unity, but a brittle fragmentation, as if these visions had only ever been very distant and incalculably darkened reflections, illusory and allusive glimmerings fading away almost as soon as they were born, mere specks of dust: just the banal projection of their clumsiest desires, an almost insubstantial haze of paltry splendours, scraps of dreams they would never be able to grasp.

Her hair was the color of the fiery light from a dying sunset, one last burst of crimson before it faded into night. Her skin the color of fresh cow’s milk, eyes the color of unfurled leaves. Her smile was sunshine. She was my everything. I felt a sudden warmth in my chest, a feeling so strong it was an almost physical pain. I could see all of her beauty then, in the way the light shone on her face, and I knew then that I loved her beyond measure.

O ne of the most reassuring phases of life is when you’re anticipating justice from Allah. You’ve finished the most difficult test, the ache of what you were put through still visits once in a while, the memories haven’t faded yet but you’re focusing on something bigger, something better. You haven’t yet figured out the entire purpose of the journey but it doesn’t bother you anymore, because your eyes are gazing at the door that is placed right in front of you. You stare and touch it, all these gruesome steps have led you to it. Although you aren’t aware of what lies on the other side, you know Allah can open it any moment and it contains the treasure of your blessings. And you’re certain that your reward is massive, boundless and so amazing that your heart is going to burst in gratitude. You hold on to that hope because your Lord is the Most Just. There’s no other way to recompense what you went through except by filling your hands with so much joy that you no more have a moment to spare at what you lost.

Just as Greystone swung, however, she ducked low and rolled in the other direction. Greystone's blade struck the window, and it exploded in a shower of glass. The shards flew in all directions, and a great gust of wind from the storm sent him stumbling back. As soon as Anne was back on her feet, she raised her gauntlet-hand. "Activate GPS!" Jeffery appeared in a burst of light. He was still a bit faded, but at least he was there. Anne nearly collapsed with relief. "You're cutting it close, you know," said Jeffery. "Although I do like a dramatic entrance." As if to emphasize the point, a bolt of lightning lit up the sky.

His hands balled into fists. How dare she? How dare she burst into his room and kiss him and dive into a river and invade his dreams and make him go shopping and throw herself headlong into danger and lean back against a pear tree in a dress the exact color of her hair kissed by fading sunlight? How dare she make him forget? Damn it all. Damn her for making him care.

A shape and a texture: unctuous black violet lit with iridescent pearl. An eye amidst a halo of dead stars. Crystalline bones unfolding, like the geodes and kaleidoscopes he peered into as a child. Wondrous, yes. Within those black-violet prisms pulsed colors beyond his knowing, skin of twisted roots and dark tumors, and a voice—her voice—that reached across the vast cosmos. Crossed it for him. She pressed herself up against the ice above. Her unblinking eye focused in on him, seeing him, and filled him with warmth. She whispered, “Lloyd, it’s time to wake up.” So that’s what he did. The cold ice at his fingertips became the cool sheets of his bed. The wet pressure inside his body burst as a gasp left his lips. He rose, not through the frozen lake but into the midnight shadows of his bedroom. And the eye. Her eye. It no longer stared through the ice but faded behind the ceiling of his house. He felt a great presence retreating, up through the attic, up into the sky, into the cold reaches above Earth, and into the deepest recesses beyond space and time.

It was right at the heels of Chuck and Jonah as they ran. Jonah could feel the hairs on his neck rise as he went, though he wouldn’t spare a moment to look back, he knew it was right on the verge of catching them. They could see the light in front of them fading as the elevator doors slowly slid shut. Jonah didn’t know if they were going to make it in time. His fear sent his adrenaline pumping, and he grabbed Chuck’s shirt and put on a burst of speed. They dove into the elevator just in time, sending the room into a dizzying sway.

My grin is beginning to hurt my cheeks, but it refuses to fade. Something deep inside me feels like it's glowing, and this goofy smile seems to be the only way to safely let out some of the light and heat before I burst.

Walking around Spoleto is like stepping into an old Italian advertisement bursting with color. Little cafés dot the streets and are already filing up. The shops and houses are all painted with faded versions of sunset hues--- hazy blue, orangey salmon, marigold, and dusty pinks. They all have large rounded black-and-blue shutters and equally archlike stone entrances where large wooden doors are nestled. Streetlamps jut out from the sides of buildings with misty, globe-shaped balls attached to twirling wrought iron.

My fingers grazed his. Warm and sturdy- patient, as if waiting to see what else I might do. Maybe it was the wind, but I stroked a finger down his. And as I turned to him more fully, something blinding and tinkling slammed into my face. I reeled back, crying out as I bent over, shielding my face against the light that I could still see against my shut eyes. Rhys let out a startled laugh. A laugh. And when I realised that my eyes hadn't been singed out of their sockets, I whirled on him. 'I could have been blinded!' I hissed, shoving him. He took a look at my face and burst out laughing again. Real laughter, open and delighted and lovely. I wiped at my face, and when I pulled my hands down, I gasped. Pale green light- like drops of paint- glowed in flecks on my hand. Splattered star-spirit. I didn't know if I should be horrified or amused. Or disgusted. When I went to rub it off, Rhys caught my hand. 'Don't,' he said, still laughing. 'It looks like your freckles are glowing.' My nostrils flared, and I went to shove him again, not caring if my new strength knocked him off the balcony. He could summon wings; he could deal with it. He sidestepped me, veering toward the balcony rail, but not fast enough to avoid the careening star that collided with the side of his face. He leaped back with a curse. I laughed, the sound rasping out of me. Not a chuckle or snort, but a cackling laugh. And I laughed again, and again, as he lowered his hands from his eyes. The entire left side of his face had been hit. Like heavenly war paint, that's what it looked like. I could see why he didn't want me to wipe mine away. Rhys was examining his hands, covered in the dust, and I stepped toward him, peering at the way it glowed and glittered. He went still as death as I took one of his hands in my own and traced a star shape on the top of his palm, playing with the glimmer and shadows, until it looked like one of the stars that had hit us. His fingers tightened on mine, and I looked up. He was smiling at me. And looked so un-High-Lord-like with the glowing dust on the side of his face that I grinned back. I hadn't even realised what I'd done until his own smile faded,, and his mouth partly slightly. 'Smile again,' he whispered. I hadn't smiled for him. Ever. Or laughed. Under the Mountain, I had never grinned, never chuckled. And afterward... And this male before me... my friend... For all that he had done, I had never given him either. Even when I had just... I had just painted something. On him. For him. I'd- painted again. So I smiled at him, broad and without restraint. 'You're exquisite,' he breathed.

She bursts into tears then, and call me heartless, but it solidifies my anger even more. She brought all this onto herself and a few tears won't sway me.