Dusk Game Quotes

Life had taught her that we all require big and small lies in order to survive, just as much as we need air. She used to say that if during one single day, from dawn to dusk, we could see the naked reality of the world, and of ourselves, we would either take our own lives or lose our minds.

On game day, until five o'clock or so, the white desert light held off the essential Sunday gloom—autumn sinking into winter, loneliness of October dusk with school the next day—but there was always a long still moment toward the end of those football afternoons where the mood of the crowd turned and everything grew desolate and uncertain, onscreen and off, the sheet-metal glare off the patio glass fading to gold and then gray, long shadows and night falling into desert stillness, a sadness I couldn't shake off, a sense of silent people filing toward the stadium exits and cold rain falling in college towns back east.

By the time she had grown sharper,..., she found in her mind a collection of images and echoes to which meanings were attachable- images and echoes kept for her in the childish dusk, the dim closet, the high drawers, like games she wasn't big enough to play.

Beyond the table, there is an altar, with candles lit for Billie Holiday and Willa Carter and Hypatia and Patsy Cline. Next to it, an old podium that once held a Bible, on which we have repurposed an old chemistry handbook as the Book of Lilith. In its pages is our own liturgical calendar: Saint Clementine and All Wayfarers; Saints Lorena Hickok and Eleanor Roosevelt, observed in the summer with blueberries to symbolize the sapphire ring; the Vigil of Saint Juliette, complete with mints and dark chocolate; Feast of the Poets, during which Mary Oliver is recited over beds of lettuce, Kay Ryan over a dish of vinegar and oil, Audre Lorde over cucumbers, Elizabeth Bishop over some carrots; The Exaltation of Patricia Highsmith, celebrated with escargots boiling in butter and garlic and cliffhangers recited by an autumn fire; the Ascension of Frida Khalo with self-portraits and costumes; the Presentation of Shirley Jackson, a winter holiday started at dawn and ended at dusk with a gambling game played with lost milk teeth and stones. Some of them with their own books; the major and minor arcana of our little religion.

I curled my hands into fists, and made myself a promise. If this world liked games, then I’d learn the rules. If intrigue bought friends, then I’d collect secrets. If Dowser could teach me to control the kaleidoscope of colors blooming like jeweled flowers from my fingertips, then I’d endure the tabak stench of his gloomy chambers. I would not falter.

VII. A Knock at the Door VIII. A Hand at Cards IX. The Game Made X. The Substance of the Shadow XI. Dusk XII.

Why a place that had once seemed like a haven for magic and wonder had transformed into a nightmare of pain and lies and disappearances.

There is a game that the immortal play. It is played around tables that open at dusk, and close at dawn. The stakes are impossibly high, and yet laughably low. There is only one secret: The more you have to lose, the harder it is to win. There is only one rule: Don't lose.

I believe hurling is the best of us, one of the greatest and most beautiful expressions of what we can be. For me that is the perspective that death and loss cast on the game. If you could live again you would hurl more, because that is living. You'd pay less attention to the rows and the mortgage and the car and all the daily drudge. Hurling is our song and our verse, and when I walk in the graveyard in Cloyne and look at the familiar names on the headstones I know that their ownders would want us to hurl with more joy and more exuberance and more (as Frank Murphy used to tell us) abandon than before, because life is shorter than the second half of a tournament game that starts at dusk.

You think you understand this world, demoiselle,” he whispered, leaning closer. That sharp tang of genévrier needles slapped me in the face. “You think you hear Dexter, or Sinister, and you know what that means. Good, evil, legacy. Pain, poison, power. You imagine these words bound up and trussed away, with clear outlines and hard borders. But they are alive, seething with a complexity you refuse to acknowledge.

Little by little, the long light of this June evening mellows to dusk. The kids who’ve been playing on sidewalks and front lawns go inside to watch TV or play video games or spend an educational evening texting various misspelled messages and dumbass emoticons to their friends.

Hand at Cards IX. The Game Made X. The Substance of the Shadow XI. Dusk

at the Door VIII. A Hand at Cards IX. The Game Made X. The Substance of the Shadow XI. Dusk XII. Darkness

if during one single day, from dawn to dusk, we could see the naked reality of the world, and of ourselves, we would either take our own lives or lose our minds.

XXIV. And more than that - a furlong on - why, there! What bad use was that engine for, that wheel, Or brake, not wheel - that harrow fit to reel Men's bodies out like silk? With all the air Of Tophet's tool, on earth left unaware Or brought to sharpen its rusty teeth of steel. XXV. Then came a bit of stubbed ground, once a wood, Next a marsh it would seem, and now mere earth Desperate and done with; (so a fool finds mirth, Makes a thing and then mars it, till his mood Changes and off he goes!) within a rood - Bog, clay and rubble, sand, and stark black dearth. XXVI. Now blotches rankling, coloured gay and grim, Now patches where some leanness of the soil's Broke into moss, or substances like boils; Then came some palsied oak, a cleft in him Like a distorted mouth that splits its rim Gaping at death, and dies while it recoils. XXVII. And just as far as ever from the end! Naught in the distance but the evening, naught To point my footstep further! At the thought, A great black bird, Apollyon's bosom friend, Sailed past, not best his wide wing dragon-penned That brushed my cap - perchance the guide I sought. XXVIII. For, looking up, aware I somehow grew, Spite of the dusk, the plain had given place All round to mountains - with such name to grace Mere ugly heights and heaps now stolen in view. How thus they had surprised me - solve it, you! How to get from them was no clearer case. XXIX. Yet half I seemed to recognise some trick Of mischief happened to me, God knows when - In a bad dream perhaps. Here ended, then Progress this way. When, in the very nick Of giving up, one time more, came a click As when a trap shuts - you're inside the den. XXX. Burningly it came on me all at once, This was the place! those two hills on the right, Crouched like two bulls locked horn in horn in fight; While to the left a tall scalped mountain ... Dunce, Dotard, a-dozing at the very nonce, After a life spent training for the sight! XXXI. What in the midst lay but the Tower itself? The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart, Built of brown stone, without a counterpart In the whole world. The tempest's mocking elf Points to the shipman thus the unseen shelf He strikes on, only when the timbers start. XXXII. Not see? because of night perhaps? - why day Came back again for that! before it left The dying sunset kindled through a cleft: The hills, like giants at a hunting, lay, Chin upon hand, to see the game at bay, - Now stab and end the creature - to the heft!' XXXIII. Not hear? When noise was everywhere! it tolled Increasing like a bell. Names in my ears Of all the lost adventurers, my peers - How such a one was strong, and such was bold, And such was fortunate, yet each of old Lost, lost! one moment knelled the woe of years. XXXIV. There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met To view the last of me, a living frame For one more picture! In a sheet of flame I saw them and I knew them all. And yet Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set, And blew. 'Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.

A game. A vicious game to take my trust and transfigure it into something else. Something that now nestled chilly against my heart, beckoning me even as I fought to shove it away. Something bleak and delicious and horribly, wonderfully tempting.

For those minutes courage flowed like wine out of the November dusk, and he was the eternal hero, one with the sea-rover on the prow of a Norse galley, one with Roland and Horatius, Sir Nigel and Ted Coy, scraped and stripped into trim and then flung by his own will into the breach, beating back the tide, hearing from afar the thunder of cheers . . . finally bruised and weary, but still elusive, circling an end, twisting, changing pace, straight-arming . . . falling behind the Groton goal with two men on his legs, in the only touchdown of the game. THE

On game day, until five o’clock or so, the white desert light held off the essential Sunday gloom—autumn sinking into winter, loneliness of October dusk with school the next day—but there was always a long still moment toward the end of those football afternoons where the mood of the crowd turned and everything grew desolate and uncertain, onscreen and off, the sheet-metal glare off the patio glass fading to gold and then gray, long shadows and night falling into desert stillness, a sadness I couldn’t shake off, a sense of silent people filing toward the stadium exits and cold rain falling in college towns back east.

Saying good-bye to Ben is Sarina's least favorite activity. So sad the number of times she's had to do it. Ball games, recitals, the homes of friends, rented shore houses, through car windows after dropping off some forgotten camera to Annie. Goodbye. See you later. Nice seeing you. She has mastered it: A dismissive peck on the cheek. A hug like an afterthought. Telling herself, Do not watch him walk away. Watching him walk away. Watching him drive away. Watching him descend the stairs to the subway. How many times have they said goodbye to each other? Already tonight, twice. He interrupts her before she can get the second goodbye out. "How would you feel," he says, "about missing your train?" Once at the beach, Sarina watched a crane bathing in a gully at dusk. It used its wings to funnel the water over its back, then shook out the excess in a firework of droplets. After several minutes it took off, arcing out over the fretless sea. That felt like this.

There is a lonesome field of tall grasses within which one might pass a warm dusk eve and watch the stars and fireflies bring new illumination against the periwinkle sky and amidst the faint symphony of crickets and marsh frogs. A breeze whisks over and nearly flattens the fibrous stalks, and there is a sense of renewing peace that fills the form on this eve that one might wish to carry forward into all moments thereafter—a resplendent sense of contentment. All is finally and lastingly to one’s satisfaction. And yet, right now, this notion of satisfaction seems illusory and unattainable. At these depths, it seems too like a childish game.

There’s language to the woods and it’s speaking to those capable of listening, to ears taught to decode meanings mild or malignant. Geese flying, bees buzzing. Howl of a wolf, height of the clouds, face of the moon, colour of the night and the morning sky, movement of game, snowfall heavy or light — things mostly lost on most people. Where others heard the winds in the maples, the trapper smelled the sap on the breeze. A wind veered northerly and where another might think the evening cold, he knew frost was coming early and the temperatures would stay cold for a week and the bears would feed heavily before the berry bushes died and the deer would be more active at dusk, at dawn. Inflections of the forest, cadence of the wilderness, language of the North.

The Fore and Aft had enjoyed unbroken peace for five days, and were beginning, in spite of dysentery, to recover their nerve. But they were not happy, for they did not know the work in hand, and had they known, would not have known how to do it. Throughout those five days in which old soldiers might have taught them the craft of the game, they discussed together their misadventures in the past — how such an one was alive at dawn and dead ere the dusk,

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about. They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three. There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another table who look the recruits over. The recruits stand sideways along the bar with their thumbs in their belts and watch the room. They talk among themselves of the expedition in loud voices and the old Mennonite shakes a rueful head and sips his drink and mutters. They'll stop you at the river, he says. The second corporal looks past his comrades. Are you talking to me? At the river. Be told. They'll jail you to a man. Who will? The United States Army. General Worth. They hell they will. Pray that they will. He looks at his comrades. He leans toward the Mennonite. What does that mean, old man? Do ye cross that river with yon filibuster armed ye'll not cross it back. Don't aim to cross it back. We goin to Sonora. What's it to you, old man? The Mennonite watches the enshadowed dark before them as it is reflected to him in the mirror over the bar. He turns to them. His eyes are wet, he speaks slowly. The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell aint half full. Hear me. Ye carry war of a madman's making into a foreign land. Ye'll wake more than the dogs. But they berated the old man and swore at him until he moved off down the bar muttering, and how else could it be? How these things end. In confusion and curses and blood. They drank on and the wind blew in the streets and the stars that had been overhead lay low in the west and these young men fell afoul of others and words were said that could not be put right again and in the dawn the kid and the second corporal knelt over the boy from Missouri who had been named Earl and they spoke his name but he never spoke back. He lay on his side in the dust of the courtyard. The men were gone, the whores were gone. An old man swept the clay floor within the cantina. The boy lay with his skull broken in a pool of blood, none knew by whom. A third one came to be with them in the courtyard. It was the Mennonite. A warm wind was blowing and the east held a gray light. The fowls roosting among the grapevines had begun to stir and call. There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto, said the Mennonite. He had been holding his hat in his hands and now he set it upon his head again and turned and went out the gate.

Travis talked of what they could do with their day, as if his mother would be there for all of it, including dinner and a game of glowing Frisbee in the dusk. He suggested names for the pony, spoke about saddling it for the first time as if Jane would see him take his inaugural ride days from now. She let him talk, joined him in the pony naming, because he knew that for all their talk, she would be leaving; this was only heartfelt wishing, while there was still time to wish away the day that must be and hope to conjure in its place the day that ought to be.

On game day, until five o’clock or so, the white desert light held off the essential Sunday gloom—autumn sinking into winter, loneliness of October dusk with school the next day—but there was always a long still moment toward the end of those football afternoons where the mood of the crowd turned and everything grew desolate and uncertain, onscreen and off, the sheet-metal glare off the patio glass fading to gold and then gray, long shadows and night falling into desert stillness, a sadness I couldn’t shake off, a sense of silent people filing toward the stadium exits and cold rain falling in college towns back east. The panic that overtook me then was hard to explain. Those game days broke up with a swiftness, a sense of losing blood almost, that reminded me of watching the apartment in New York being boxed up and carted away: groundlessness and flux, nothing to hang on

In the dark melodramas of the forties, woman came down from her pedestal and she didn’t stop when she reached the ground. She kept going – down, down, like Eurydice, to the depths of the criminal world, the enfer of the film noir – and then compelled her lover to glance back and betray himself…. But for all her guts and valor, and for all her unredeemable venality…she hadn’t a soul she could call her own. She was, in fact, a male fantasy. She was playing a man’s game in a man’s world of crime and carnal innuendo, where her long hair was the equivalent of a gun, where sex was the equivalent of evil. And where her power to destroy was projection of man’s feeling of impotence. Only this could never be spelled out; hence the subterfuge and melodrama. She is to her thirties’ counterpart as night – or dusk – is to day. And the difference between their worlds, between the drawing room of romantic comedy and the underground of melodrama, is the difference between flirtation and fornication … or rape” (Haskell 191).

Besides the fact that you’re a scoundrel at the gaming tables,” she responded tartly, “I’m beginning to suspect that you’re a womanizing rake.” Christopher grinned leisurely as his perusal swept her. “I’ve been a long time at sea. However, I doubt that in your case my reaction would vary had I just left the London Court.” Erienne’s eyes flared with poorly suppressed ire. The insufferable egotist! Did he dare think he could find a willing wench at the back door of the mayor’s cottage? “I’m sure that Claudia Talbot would welcome your company, sir. Why don’t you ride on over to see her? I hear his lordship traveled off to London this morning.” He laughed softly at her sneering tones. “I’d rather be courting you.” “Why?” she scoffed. “Because you want to thwart my father?” His smiling eyes captured hers and held them prisoner until she felt a warmth suffuse her cheeks. He answered with slow deliberation. “Because you are the prettiest maid I’ve ever seen, and I’d like to get to know you better. And of course, we should delve into this matter of your accidents more thoroughly, too.” Twin spots of color grew in her cheeks, but the deepening dusk did much to hide her blush. Lifting her nose primly in the air, Erienne turned aside, tossing him a cool glance askance. “How many women have you told that to, Mr. Seton?” A crooked smile accompanied his reply. “Several, I suppose, but I’ve never lied. Each had their place in time, and to this date, you are the best I’ve seen.” He reached out and taking a handful of the cracklings, he chewed the crisp morsels as he awaited her reaction. A flush of anger spread to the delicate tips of her ears, and icy fire smoldered in the deep blue-violet pools. “You conceited, unmitigated boor!” Her voice was as cold and as flat as the Russian steppes. “Do you think to add me to your long string of conquests?” Her chilled contempt met him face to face until he rose and towered above her. His eyes grew distant, and he reached out a finger to flip a curl that had strayed from beneath the kerchief. “Conquest?” His voice was soft and deeply resonant. “You mistake me, Erienne. In the rush of a moment’s lust, there are purchased favors, and these are for the greater part forgotten. The times that are cherished and remembered are not taken, are not given, but shared, and are thus treasured as a most blissful event.” He lifted his coat on his fingertips and slung it over his shoulder. “I do not ask that you yield to me, nor do I desire to conquer you. All I plead is that you grant me moments now and then that I might present my case, to the end that we could share a tender moment at some distant time.” -Erienne & Christopher

It had been often commented upon that Vibe offspring tended to be crazy as bedbugs. ‘Fax’s brother Cragmont had run away with a trapeze girl, then brought her back to New York to get married, the wedding being actually performed on trapezes, groom and best man, dressed in tails and silk opera hats held on with elastic, swinging upside down by their knees in perfect synchrony across the perilous Æther to meet the bride and her father, a carnival “jointee” or concessionaire, in matched excursion from their own side of the ring, bridesmaids observed at every hand up twirling by their chins in billows of spangling, forty feet above the faces of the guests, feathers dyed a deep acid green sweeping and stirring the cigar smoke rising from the crowd. Cragmont Vibe was but thirteen that circus summer he became a husband and began what would become, even for the day, an enormous family. The third brother, Fleetwood, best man at this ceremony, had also got out of the house early, fast-talking his way onto an expedition heading for Africa. He kept as clear of political games as of any real scientific inquiry, preferring to take the title of “Explorer” literally, and do nothing but explore. It did not hurt Fleetwood’s chances that a hefty Vibe trust fund was there to pick up the bills for bespoke pith helmets and meat lozenges and so forth. Kit met him one spring weekend out at the Vibe manor on Long Island. “Say, but you’ve never seen our cottage,” ‘Fax said one day after classes. “What are you doing this weekend? Unless there’s another factory girl or pizza princess or something in the works.” “Do I use that tone of voice about the Seven Sisters material you specialize in?” “I’ve nothing against the newer races,” ‘Fax protested. “But you might like to meet Cousin Dittany anyway.” “The one at Smith.” “Mount Holyoke, actually.” “Can’t wait.” They arrived under a dourly overcast sky. Even in cheerier illumination, the Vibe mansion would have registered as a place best kept clear of—four stories tall, square, unadorned, dark stone facing looking much older than the known date of construction. Despite its aspect of abandonment, an uneasy tenancy was still pursued within, perhaps by some collateral branch of Vibes . . . it was unclear. There was the matter of the second floor. Only the servants were allowed there. It “belonged,” in some way nobody was eager to specify, to previous occupants. “Someone’s living there?” “Someone’s there.” . . . from time to time, a door swinging shut on a glimpse of back stairway, a muffled footfall . . . an ambiguous movement across a distant doorframe . . . a threat of somehow being obliged to perform a daily search through the forbidden level, just at dusk, so detailed that contact with the unseen occupants, in some form, at some unannounced moment, would be inevitable . . . all dustless and tidy, shadows in permanent possession, window-drapes and upholstery in deep hues of green, claret, and indigo, servants who did not speak, who would or could not meet one’s gaze . . . and in the next room, the next instant, waiting . . . “Real nice of you to have me here, folks,” chirped Kit at breakfast. “Fellow sleeps like a top. Well, except . . .” Pause in the orderly gobbling and scarfing. Interest from all around the table. “I mean, who came in the room in the middle of the night like that?” “You’re sure,” said Scarsdale, “it wasn’t just the wind, or the place settling.” “They were walking around, like they were looking for something.” Glances were exchanged, failed to be exchanged, were sent out but not returned. “Kit, you haven’t seen the stables yet,” Cousin Dittany offered at last. “Wouldn’t you like to go riding?

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The cowboy’s face turned a bright shade of red. Whether it was from the booze or not, Clay couldn’t tell. He puffed out his chest, like a game bird ready to warn off a rival. “Now, I can tell you ain’t from around here and I don’t know how it’s done with your lot. Otherwise, you’d have known who you were speaking to. In Fairpoint, the polite thing to do is accept a man’s offer when he goes out of his way to buy you a drink. It sounds like you’re saying you’re too good for us, old timer. I reckon the way you were staring makes me think you’ve got a problem.” The other men took that as their cue to edge closer. If he wanted to, Clay could’ve tried to defuse the situation. The cowboy’s arrogance stirred a primal urge within him, a need for violence made sharper by the alcohol in his system. “I’m speaking to a nobody in some godsforsaken town in the ass end of the world. There’s nothing good about me, boy. So, do yourself a favour and walk away. Or you and the rest of them peckerwoods will be picking your teeth up off the floor.

stately homes of Britain. Trerice in Cornwall not only has its bowling alley still, but an original Tudor set of kayles, which are rather fat-bellied skittles, or bowling pins, to play with. And whether it really happened or not, Sir Francis Drake is reputedly said to have refused to break off his game of bowls when the Spanish Armada was finally sighted, a story that gains its credibility from the popularity of the game among gentlemen. The city of London had public bowling alleys, both indoor and outdoor.

But now, for millions of Americans, the magic of the dream is tarnished. Something is not right and an alien sense of discomfort grips the dreamer. Despite the excitement and promise that heralded globalization, American business seems frenzied and fickle. Many Fortune 500 companies, once considered havens of lifetime employment, have transformed themselves into profit-driven workaholic cults. The scramble for “the dream” demands a lengthened workday, diminished sleep, continuous learning, unusual energy, and a high tolerance for financial insecurity. To be “successful” is to be a multitasking dynamo. We rise early and burn the lights late. We exercise to CNN at breakfast and telephone while driving, for there’s not a moment to lose. At dinner we graze on snacks and fast food, but with a laptop computer as the preferred companion. In the culture of global commerce, which is etched most visibly on the face of America but increasingly apparent in Europe and other industrialized nations, the quest for economic prosperity has become a competitive high-speed game. For some the pursuit is seductive—as when I rise at dawn in Los Angeles to dine at dusk in New York—and it offers a mask of accomplishment and purpose. But for those snarled in traffic jams and crowded airport lounges, and for the lonely children who do not understand, America’s accelerated lifestyle is increasingly a source of anxiety and frustration. Thus

There is a game that the immortal play. It is played around tables that open at dusk, and close at dawn. The stakes are impossibly high, and yet laughably low. There is only one secret: The more you have to lose, the harder it is to win. There is only one rule: Don't lose.

Children’s leisure had to fit around work and school. Visit any playground in Britain today, and you will witness Victorian games in action. Various forms of Tag, British Bulldog, Grandma’s Footsteps and What’s the Time, Mr Wolf? still form much of the charging about when children gather. Games of marbles can be found in quieter corners, Five Stones and Jacks are still popular, and many girls are still highly skilled with a skipping rope.

West Ham was founded at the A. F. Hills shipyard and went by the name of Thames Ironworks; and of course Arsenal was a club set up by the workers at the Woolwich Arsenal factory complex. The surprising thing was that none of these clubs had in common the rules of the game. Could you pick up the ball and run with it? How big was the goal? How many players should there be to a side? These were all questions that had to be settled, or argued about, before the start of a game.

Boys were taught to hunt, fish, and fight by the men in their clan, notably their mother's brothers, although sometimes all the young men in a town were instructed together. Boys were both praised and chided, but never struck, which was a sign of disrespect. They were allowed only two meals a day to instill a good appetite and willpower. A young hunter first had to learn the ways of the animals--to become one with them by entering their habitat. He was left by a stream to study the animals that came to drink at the edge, or he was sent high up a mountain, where he learned to hide in the green leaves and shadows. During his training as a hunter, he went all day without food to learn discipline. He was taught to be as silent as his own breath, from daybreak to dusk, neither speaking nor making a sound, so that he could better listen to the voices of the woods. Hunting was a way of life, and a boy learned not to change nature, but to find a place for himself within it. Later, if a young man wished to become a shaman, he could be apprenticed, but only after he had learned to be a good hunter and warrior. The young hunter learned that because people had wastefully killed too much game in the past, the animals had cursed them with disease. Certain plants, known only to the shamans, provided cures. A young man believed that if he sprinkled tobacco on a heap of ashes at home and it caught fire, he would have a good hunt. If the tobacco did not ignite, he would find no game. A hunter knew not to kill the wolf, which was considered a messenger from the spirit world. One could sit by the fire at night, listen to the wolves' distant, mournful howls, and learn much. If a hunter killed a wolf, game would vanish, and his bow would become useless until purified by the shaman. The hunter could also place the weapon in a swift river overnight or give it to a child to play with as a toy for a while. Yet he had to remember that the wolf always sought revenge--death for death. The young hunter could protect himself by reciting a prayer and bathing morning and evening in a stream.

Why would you call for me to save you?" He led her out of the coffee shop. "Saving you would be Faroz's job." "I don't know." She looked out over the bay, taking in the soft glow of the golden hour, that magical, romantic, fleeting moment between daylight and dusk when the sun began to dip below the horizon, enveloping everything in shimmering gold. "I think it's maybe because you made me feel safe when Faroz was flashing his gun and telling us stories about being tortured. My subconscious must have figured you were my best bet for a happy Bollywood ending." "You think I could protect you?" He looked so bewildered that Layla had to laugh. "Of course I do. It's who you are. You might be trying to kick me out of the office, but you've been protecting me since the day we met.

She'd ordered the curated wild Alaskan sea cucumbers, sprinkled with artisanal milk thistle foraged at dusk from Springdale Farms and served in a sea of pureed stinging nettles. At least Sam thought that's what it was. She'd eaten the entire cucumber slice in one bite. "Are you sure you wouldn't like something, sir?" The waiter, dressed in a grain sack with cutouts for his head and arms, hovered at Sam's shoulder. "No, thank you." Sam rubbed his belly and let out a small burp. "I shouldn't have had that second Reuben on my way over. Or maybe it was the Cobb salad. I'm so full I couldn't even handle an amuse-bouche of fermented sardine foam or dihydrogen-monoxide consommé.

Games People Play We played this game with all the fire we had, but fate had carved its path before we met. You, the maestro, weaving threads of triumph, I, the faltering hand that grasped at air. I had to lose—the board was never mine. And so I fell, like autumn leaves in wind, a whispered echo fading into dusk. Farewell. Take all the spoils of games to come, where others sit with trembling, hopeful hands. I see their fate—eyes dim with quiet ruin, their hollow laughter swallowed by the dark.